“On average, first year analysts are working over 95 hours per week and sleeping 5 hours per night.” This was the headline on the opening slide of a recent Goldman Sachs working conditions survey. The rest of the findings in the survey all point to the same thing — entry-level staff are overworked. In response…
Range of Possibilities
We are experts at dismissing possibilities that don’t feel right. Based on our limited knowledge, we limit our thinking to a range of possibilities. By realizing that the true range of possibilities is broader, we can maximize our potential and become better problem solvers. Until Roger Bannister ran a sub-4-minute mile in 1954, people thought…
A closer look at one of the COVID vaccine candidates
A vaccine or cure for COVID is the most anxiously awaited development at the moment. There are at least 60 teams working on different approaches to a vaccine, this article is about one such vaccine. Moderna, a US-based company developing a vaccine called mRNA-1273 for COVID, has announced they may begin a limited rollout of…
Coronavirus: what we know
I had basic questions about the coronavirus but wasn’t able to find answers, until a friend pointed me to a podcast. It is called The Daily, produced by the New York Times, and it features an interview with Donald G. McNeil Jr., a health and science journalist. The interview addresses questions about the coronavirus —…
Notes on Gene Machine by Venki Ramakrishnan
The Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2009 was awarded to three people including Venki Ramakrishnan. Ramakrishnan is an American-British-Indian scientist who played a key role in discovering the atomic structure of ribosomes. He wrote a book titled Gene Machine, chronicling the ribosome breakthrough, which was published in 2018. Ribosomes are present in cells of living…
Notes from How Will You Measure Your Life by Clayton Christensen
I had written down these notes/excerpts in Aug 2012 while reading the book How Will You Measure Your Life by Clayton Christensen. He wrote the book around the time he was battling illness. While he’s known for books on innovation, in this book he shares business and life advice. I enjoyed the book. Notes from…
Notes on Smart People Should Build Things by Andrew Yang
In late 2014 something clicked in my head. It was a year in which I’d read a few books on starting a startup, and started entertaining thoughts of founding a startup. A year later, I quit my job and jumped full-time into working on a startup. One of the books that influenced me was Smart…
Learning stuff on YouTube
In rare moments of calm when my two year old nephew is not racing up and down the house on his scooter, he settles down to watch YouTube. He’s a YouTube “early adopter.” He’s been watching YouTube from when he was one. He now has a little inkling of all kinds of things — animals,…
How to make short videos and raise a $1 Billion seed round
Startups raising seed rounds rarely make the news but this one did, for a reason. In October 2018, a US startup called Quibi raised a massive $1 billion seed round, which is 1000x the average seed round for startups. You might be thinking how and why they got so much funding. To find out I…
What startups can learn from Jeff Bezos’ letter
Published on April 14, 2017 on LinkedIn A cool thing about Jeff Bezos’ recent letter to Amazon shareholders is the universality of his advice. The advice is relatable to startups as it is to corporate behemoths. Here’s a link to the letter: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1018724/000119312517120198/d373368dex991.htm. A few snippets from the letter that are relevant to startups: “customers are…