Showing posts with label List. Show all posts
Showing posts with label List. Show all posts
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65 Lessons I learned about Entrepreneurship

02 August 2011 View Comments »


For starters, I started a personalized merchandise company with couple of my friends while in my final year of graduation. When we jumped into this business , we knew nothing about Entrepreneurship. Not just that, we even did not know anything about merchandising, the core of our business. All we had was the zeal for making money and the knowledge that the top market players in this business are not yet indomitable. We thought that is all that is needed, as we had high esteem about our skills. But as every first time entrepreneur experiences, the ground realities are different. Once you are into it, you will learn a lot of lessons.

Though I parted with my first company within an year and a half, my interest in entrepreneurship has never left me. During the course of the year that followed, I learnt many more lessons. Here goes the compilation of lessons I learnt and probably you are not told when jumping into Entrepreneurship.

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In Pursuit of Awesomeness - Things I did

14 June 2011 View Comments »


Yesterday, I wrote my 30 Under 30 which is a list of the 30 things I plan to do before I am 30. The list was a collection of things which I haven't yet done. But there are already a lot of things I have done in the pursuit of Awesomeness. Here are some of them jotted down. I hope some of you will get inspiration for their 30 Under 30 from this list.

Initially, I am only putting 30 things in things I did. But, I will be adding more to this list as and when I do something worth mentioning.

In pursuit of Awesomeness by Lucky

1)  Steal Something
2)  Start a Web venture ( BITSexam )
3)  Start a Company ( Colon K )
4)  Do rafting ( At Rishikesh )
5)  Go on a Roadtrip to an unknown destination ( on 26th Jan 2011 )
6)  Travel around the country on a train ( TATA Jagriti Yatra )
7)  Write to a Magazine ( wrote to Bhelpuri magazine )
8)  Work as a freelancer, social media guy, programmer and a writer
9)  Write Poems in two languages (Telugu and English)
10) Cry out loud ( Most difficult phase of my life till now )
11) Jump from 2nd floor of a building ( in 7th or 8th class )
12) Pay a bribe and Refuse to bribe ( Traffic Constable and LLR )
13) Eat in more than 10 Star Hotels ( Thanks to Startup conferences :P )
14) Help organize a national level event (Event Management)
15) Watch movies continuously for 20+ hours
16) Hack a website ( Secret shhhhh! )
17) Make a software Crack ( Desktop Icon Toy )
18) Quadboot from a single Hard Disk ( Ubuntu, Suse, OSx86 and Windows Vista )
19) Earn 1 Lakh+ in a month ( via Eureka Tips )
20) Take bath on the railway tracks ( During TATA Jagriti Yatra )
21) Study in a premier institute ( BITS Pilani )
22) Deeply Hated, Loved and Respected by at least one person each
23) Travel more than 50,000 Kms on Trains ( cumulative - during my different trips )
24) Stay awake for 48+ hours ( OASIS rocks! )
25) Lie under water for more than 2 minutes.
26) Donate Blood ( 5 times till now )
27) Watch a match (actually a live telecast) in stadium ( World Cup 2011 Finals at Gachibowli Stadium, Hyd )
28) Sleep on a highway ( Also on stairs,grass, portico etc)
29) Travel 200+Kms on top of a bus with a girl ( From Pilani to Delhi )
30) Receive award/prize infront of an audience of more than 1000full post 
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How I landed in a well-paying job even though I know nothing

03 June 2011 View Comments »


For folks who don't know it yet, I recently joined a job in a startup that pays me well. But I am not going to describe the job in here. If you are looking for the job description look at this link. But I will explain how I landed in this job even though I know nothing about the technologies mentioned. I know I can make it an e-book with the title "How I got a job that pays me Million bucks per hour" and sell, but as a valuable dormant reader of this blog, I will give it to you for free.

Once I decided that I need to take a break from Entrepreneurship stuff and land in a programming job, I started to realize how tough the journey is going to be. I expected people to lay red carpet to their companies inviting me to join so as to utilize my entrepreneurial-socialmedia-seo-webmarketing-analytical abilities. But the reality is different. Companies want people who give results and apparently results come only with relevant experience. So, my two years sabbatical with entrepreneurship, social media, internet marketing etc is counted as no experience in these companies. And hence I started applying to fresher roles. But too bad that I was considered old for those roles and hence resume was never shortlisted. Moreover, I was told that it takes at least 1-2 months for the calls to start appear as resumes move very slowly in the corporate hierarchy. This made me restless.


I come from the world where things happen very quickly. In that world, if you are late by even a minute you might have shut the door on a life-time opportunity. But here it is different. Two months seemed too long to me. So, I laid out a plan on how I am going to minimize this time and land in a job that fits to my requirements. The plan I chalked out was as follows:

1. Prepare a Resume

Everyone knows that a resume is the first step in your job preparation. But the problem is not many people allocate sufficient time in resume preparation. For me, as I knew that my major problem is getting shortlisted (as I am confident I can get through once shortlisted), resume was a matter of utmost importance. Firstly, I selected a template that was very suitable for me to highlight my strengths and hide my weaknesses. I am not asking you to lie here, but asking you to hide. Luckily, my resume had enough points to fill 4 pages. Now, I shared this draft resume with at least 30 of my friends and took suggestions from them. Important of their suggestions was to reduce the size of resume. Recruiters have to wade through hundreds of resumes and hence their attention span is very low. So, you need to keep your resume as short as possible highlighting all your strengths. With their help, I reduced the resume to 2 pages. Then I got two friends, who possessed the best writing skills among my friends, to proof read the resume. With that done, I have finished the resume preparation. We need to make our resume easily shareable. So, I uploaded it on Scribd so that anyone who finds it good can forward to recruiting companies easily.

2.Job Portals suck

Everyone knows it. Still, I do not want to leave any stone unturned. After all, I am looking to land in a job very quick. So, I uploaded my resume into all the job portals. When people apply for jobs, they concentrate only on top job portals. But the real jobs are at niche job portals. They are more focussed and the companies advertising jobs over there are very clear about their requirements. Moreover, it is comparatively easier to grab the attention of recruiters there. So, I scoured for the niche job portals and applied in them too.

3. Set your expectations

When most people go out on job search they are not very clear about their requirements. They get desperate in job search and opt for any job. But if you don't choose a job that reaches your expectations, there is a high chance that you will repent in your job. So, define your expectations clearly. My expectations were that the job has to offer me high experience of programming, very good pay , job security and a good growth rate. I think most of them will have the same expectations. I even wrote them on the whiteboard in my room so as to not get tempted by jobs that have most of these qualities except one. I want my job to have all these not one less.

4. Learn the most popular technology

As I said before, I was considered a nobody because I did not have proper programming experience. I was so low on confidence that I believed what they said was right - that I know nothing about programming. It was good in a way. This led to me to decide that I have to do some learning before attending job interviews. As, my expectations did not include work in specific technology, I decided I will learn the technology that has high number of jobs and growth rate. A small research in the job portals, world wide web and my network made me choose JAVA as the programming language that I need to learn to get the job I wanted. So, I decided to learn JAVA. Not just programming, for any field you want to do a job in, I think, it is important that you be equipped with the knowledge of most-popular technology.

5. Leverage your network

Network is everything. We heard it many a time. But this should be the best time that you can utilize your network. Everyone has a network. Your college friends, your alumni, friends of friends, School friends, relatives, colleagues of parents, Online friends etc., all are part of this network. As any job consultant/ job portal would tell you, the maximum number of jobs are attained through network rather than portals, walkins etc. So, I decided to use my big network for my job search. Using your network means not just you but all the people in your network doing the job search for you. As I can't reach to each and everyone telling about my job search, I used the social media. I published my resume, along with what I am looking for, on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn etc. I put the same as status message on my IM accounts and made sure  they remained online for the most part of the day. I also mailed to my alumni groups, startup jobs mailing lists, and my friend groups.  Many people contacted me after this blast saying that they are referring me/ forwarding my resume in their company. Some good people even offered to send my resume to people in their network. It really worked.

6. Don't be shy

The most important thing you must realize is that we are begging for a job. Beggars can't be shy. If they are shy, they can't earn their bread. Most people are shy at asking others for help in their job search. That doesn't work. I decided that I am not going to be shy. I know that people are going to ask me why I am quitting entrepreneurship, or how I did wrong by going for entrepreneurship etc. But that doesn't matter. And I need not hide my decision. So, I told everyone that I am looking for a job and I was not shy in doing so.

7. Practice daily

Though I was completely immersed in doing the above activities, I never stopped practising. I don't know if the maxim "Practice makes man perfect" is right  but I am sure practice makes you learn things easily and remember them better. So, I picked up random problems and tried solving them in different ways. StackOverflow is a very good source to pick up IT related problems and learn from.

8. Be humble

All the points above are pre-interview strategies. The real war starts when you are actually shortlisted and being interviewed. I made sure that I utilize my learnings before to get through the interview. While answering the questions is important in interview, it is also important that you be humble while answering them. Your confidence shouldn't be misunderstood as over-confidence. Adding a bit of humbleness in your answers will surely help in this. You can show humbleness by using a soft voice, ensuring no bragging in your talk, giving succint responses etc

9. Be Yourself/ Be honest

You need to open up with recruiters. Many people try to answer the generic questions "Tell about yourself" with the most generic by-hearted responses. I made sure that I don't prepare for these questions before hand and speak my heart out. Because of this act, I may not get the job but I will be sure that the interviewer knew what I want before offering me the job.

10. Understand your limitations

Everyone thinks that they know their limitations. But the problem is we don't understand them. I made sure that I list my limitations before the interview and when the question landed in that area, I clearly said them that that is my limitation. Agreed that I tried to hide my limitations in the Resume but in the interview I wanted to be true about the limitations. If I don't say that I am weak in that particular area, the recruiter might ask more questions related to  that making the most part of interview hapless.

If you are not yet bored with the above stuff, here goes the simpler stuff of how my job happened. After following the above points, I got many people to help. One of my long-forgotten friends has seen my status message in GTalk and referred me about a job in an exciting startup. I forwarded my resume to them and that happened to be the first and last interview in this job search :) I said I do not know the technologies ( JAVA, Spring and Hibernate ) they needed yet but they were happy about my resume and my performance in the interview that they believed I can learn it very soon.

Though I was not really excited about my job while joining, I can now say that this is the best programming job that can happen to me at this phase of my career.

Oh, by the way my company is hiring now. Here is the JD. If you are interested mail me your resume at santosh.lakshman(at)yahoo(DOT)com
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10+ Reasons Why I bunked most of my College Classroom sessions

21 April 2011 View Comments »

Well, college life is the most awesome phase of life for everyone. That is the time when we enjoy the life in its pristine form. We don't have the pressure of parents forcing us to pursue their unfulfilled dreams. We don't need to worry about the future phase of life that is infested with worries that come in different forms and sizes like job, marriage, kids etc.

My college life is no less. Like everyone, I too feel that my college life is the best of all. This is the time I made some great friends, got attracted to some marvelous girls, faced some unpleasant rejections, enjoyed some lucky successes and discovered a lot of new passions. This is the time I  had lot of happy moments, a few very sad moments, and many memorable moments.

Whenever some one asks me why my college life was like what it was - my reason is that I bunked most of my engineering classes. Every college student likes bunking classes. I am no less. My college too helped the cause by not making attendance compulsory. They probably believe that we are mature enough to make our own decisions and that is the reason why I love my college a lot.
So, I wondered why did I bunk most of my College classes. Then I arrived at the following 10+ reasons for why I bunked my classes.

1. Friendships don't happen in Classrooms

Everyone knows that you can't have fun in a classroom. And, you also know that friendships are formed during fun time. So, if I don't want to remain alone through my college life, then I have to go out and make friends. I need to go for fun trips, watch some random worthless movies and play games that are designed for kids. After all, friends are the ones who are going to help you in preparing for exams :)


2. Lecture Slides/Notes Zindabad

As the Gen-y students we need to be advanced in every aspect of life and adopt the new technology.So why not adopt the latest revolution that is Lecture slides ? There are some class room notes that need to be photocopied, for everything else there are lecture slides. My college being one of the premier institutes in the country there is no dearth for lecture slides at all. There are even advanced versions made using the imaginary flow chart given below.

3.  Professors Bore me to Death

Well don't get me wrong. I love my professors and they are knowledgeable enough to teach. But most of the professors are old and they are too slow. The entire lecture explained by them in a 1 hour class can be grasped by glancing over the lecture slides for 15 minutes. Moreover, we anyways refer lecture slides at the eleventh hour. So, why do we need double work?

4.  The Curriculum Sucks

The world knows it. The curriculum that is designed in archaic times is no way in sync with the current industry. I know it and you know it. Why should we waste our time in these closed spaces? Instead we can go out into the world and keep ourselves informed with the latest advancements.


5.  Love doesn't blossom between closed walls

College is our best chance to get a girl friend. We need to make the best of this opportunity or else we run the risk of spending a lot of our youth without a partner eventually falling into the trap of arranged marriage. But love doesn't happen in those classrooms. Love is out there flowing in the parks, food-joints and hangout places. So, off I go in finding my lady love.


6.  Time is valuable

College life is very short. Before and after it is cluttered with all those panic attacks and hence we need to make the most of college life. We need to find time to do innumerable activities like watching movies, playing online games, offline sports, hanging out with friends, planning parties, outdoor trips, pursuing passions etc. Amidst all these allocating one-third of a day for lectures is too unrealistic.

7.  I already know it all

Having got admission into the college via the prestigious entrance test, we already know a lot. Much of the curriculum  in the early days is already  known to us during our preparation for the entrance and hence we need not attend the classes. Moreover, as intelligent as we are , we know lot of stuff that was learnt during our pursuit of topics of personal interest.


8. Self Study is the best Study

We are mature enough to learn all by ourselves. In addition, the advent of the internet has made  it easier for us to learn from.  There is abundant amount of information available out there that can be learnt by only self-study and not by lecturer's age old methods.

9.  Practical Knowledge is essential

While theory bores you out and makes your brain empty, it is the practical experience that is going to make you wiser. So, we bunk our classes in pursuit of practical experience at the places where it is more probable to be found.

10.  Classes are Bonus

My friend Manoj Lambo was recently mentioning on Facebook that he is spending approximately 100 INR per hour for lectures. (His assumption was that fee per semester is 50K and number of hours per semester is 500 so its 100 per hour) But my thinking during college days was different. We pay our college for the Degree they confer us. The lectures are the free offer that comes with them. So, as a staunch believer of the maxim - You get what your pay for - I decided that lectures are not worthy enough.

Now, don't ask why I said 10+ but there are only 10 here. I just lied to you :)

The above were my excuses during college time. My thinking is a lot different and matured now. Do wait for my next post "10+ reasons why my reasons for bunking classes are not reasonable"
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