Working on research is both challenging & interesting. Some find it really stimulating to work on these less explored novel areas to develop something unique which is more fascinating compared to conventional monotonous work. Here I would like to share some of my thoughts and experiences related to research which could provide some pointers to your early research career. (This article by no means provide guidance on higher educational aspect of Research which is beyond the level of my expertise.)

I started off my research journey through an idea I had for a startup, where I focused on developing an early disease prediction system (Clardia). This was a self-research project during my undergraduate period which taught me a lot. For all enthusiasts in research I believe this is the best way forward, to work on your own small project, which will give you great understanding on what is required and the obstacles ahead. And eventually once you feel lost you will understand the importance of Supervision.

Quality Supervision will save you a lot of time. The guidance of a knowledgeable, experienced researcher would be of great assistance to your project as they foresee most of the important aspects and constrains in the related area of work. A thorough Literature Review might provide you with all the necessary insights, but being practical working with a supervisor in the related field will be much more beneficial. For an example the research path that you may be following could lead to a dead end resulting in frustration and agony, which could have been minimized through the supervision of someone who have faced similar problems and have much experience.

My next set of experiences are from my Final Year Research project on Developing a Wearable Device to Predict Injury. This was more of a structured approach towards research where we worked for a period of 1 year. It is important to make sure that you select the correct project when you are given a specific Timeline. A thorough evaluation must be done based on the Feasibility of the research, the Objectives and whether it could be delivered within the required time frame. It’s always good to select a project with sufficient depth which you are able to complete. For an example a project where you develop a hardware device, collects your own data and provides analytics on top of it, would be a tedious task given the prototyping resource limitations of hardware, monetary, time and other limitations.

What is your Area of Interest? Once you start working on research projects you would have a clear sense on what areas you are actually interested in working on. Even though this may seem a simple question. It is not, the areas are so vast. The early research experiences would help you to understand what you really love, and once you achieve this, working won’t really feel like work, instead you would start enjoying the experience. You might even find your interests outside the course you currently undertake.

Currently I’m a MSc Research student, and I found it really enlightening to work with fellow Research Colleagues. Even though they aren’t necessarily working on the same areas of Research, there are so much to share and learn. This knowledge transfer actually improves the learning curve as it is really interesting to understand concepts in diverse verticals and maybe even try to incorporate them in your own research. Hence its really important and beneficial to actually work in a research lab and have those interactions to grow yourself and help each other.

These collaborations in research would also have a networking effect. Most postgraduate research opportunities focus on Recommendations, where it would be beneficial to be working with top researchers in the respective field. Working with esteemed supervisors would help you to come up with quality research. And it is always good to network with researchers overseas to ask for advice obtain their assistance when needed, building your Connections.

You can also focus on Publishing your research at good conferences, and experience the atmosphere of a conference where similar researchers around the world gather to share and discuss their research. This would be a great motivator towards more future research. It is also important to focus on Grants & Finances if you are focusing on pursuing a full-time research career, which might be a constraint in some cases. It is always good and recommended to work on projects with the necessary funding.

Finally, the beauty of research is that, it’s a continuous learning process where each day, it would be something fresh and challenging. Hence the importance of working on your area of interest and ensuring that it is a growing area with a lot of potential. If you are working on a rapidly growing area of research, the more research and the experience you gain, the more your value would increase, enabling you to make a positive change to the world. I hope this small introduction would encourage you towards the start of your research journey….

You can build your dream team for the startup by searching for the right talent, passion, holding interviews, through referral etc. But here we are focusing on the core team or rather the Co-Founders of the startup. This bunch is going to be the driving force. But in case you are unable to find the correct mix, it could well be a damping factor. Thus, the importance of allocating more effort and time for this decision, similarly to brainstorming for ideas.

Here I would like to summarize some of the key elements which I have observed and experienced within startups. Hope this would be kind of a guideline to simplify the thought process towards the decision of selecting your Co-Founders.

1. Passion, Drive & Motivation

The most importance characteristic is to find whether your potential Co-Founder or Founders possess the passion towards building their own companies, and have that innate drive to full fill their dreams of becoming an entrepreneur. It would be nice to have a chat and understand what really motivated the person to build a startup. The motivating factors could vary with different thinking patterns. Some may yearn to build their own products, challenge the status quo of working in conventional companies, and might even be motivated by the big money.

Evaluating the passion and understanding the motivation behind that person to be in a startup is thus really important. You should beware of the types who are just looking to be part of a startup, since it sounds cool, as a hobby to pass time. Also analyzing most startups, you start in College or University there are many people who would just join to make their resume more attractive since their ultimate objective actually is to work for another company!! not start his/her own.

2. Vision & Principles

Yes, you found the correct person with the actually passion for a startup, but does your Vision & Principles align. Some want to build products, some services. Some want to do revolutionary products, others want to stick to conventional methods. All of these are their own preferences. But this is really important!!! Inability to match the correct vision would lead to a deadlock and frustration.

Also, what are the principles of that person, and are they align with your startup idea. These principles could be ethical, religious or even something personal. For an example you want to build an innovative product around marketing, but your Co-Founder finds marketing as a way of deceiving customers & inappropriate. For some this example may sound absurd. But trust me I have experienced far peculiar principles that people have which could impact a startup.

3. Attitude & Personality

Everything is set, and he/she looks like the perfect match. But hold on, this person would be around you 80hrs a week, through the tough times and the worst times! So is this person easy to work with, what type of a personality does the person possess. What sort of an attitude does he / she possess?

Practically it’s hard to find an ideal person. But rather, should focus on someone who you can work with. The stress and pressure of a startup would test both / all of you, and its perfect ok to have heated arguments. But the important thing is whether everything can be negotiated and decisions could be taken collaboratively to move forward as a company.

Most Co-Founders leave because they are unheard, their ideas, thoughts and feedback are neglected. This could result when there is a personality mis match, when there are extreme personalities and attitudes.

4. Role & Contribution

You should be looking for a core skill set in a Co-Founder. How will the person add value to the Startup? If both of you are adding the same value, or in the same background maybe the impact would be low and conflicts may be high in some cases.

I have observed startups thriving who have a Co-Founders from multiple domains and expertise. For an example when there is a Marketeer in midst of Engineers higher the possibility of actually building a better product with better sales. All the diverse set of ideas from different domains matter, and would be respectful to here out all the ideas.

Here the problem could also arise what is the optimal number of Co-Founders? Which I think might depend on different settings. Here I have observed large teams with 4,5 Founders getting more work done compared to some teams with around 2 who are struggling. I do not wish to evaluate this question in this article.

Once you choose the perfect partner, then you must be clear on the roles that person is in charge of, their targets. This is really important because you don’t want a Founder who is idling while you do all the hard work. Hence there should be a clearly set of objectives and a timeline, and even possible penalties if the person does not adhere. No one wants to keep a free rider in a team!!!

5. Documentation & Comprehension

Startups are awesome when all the Co-Founders are friends. But this is also another red flag. Friends think they don’t require proper documentation, but once the problem arises usually people start with “I thought”, and it turns out that different people have had different perceptions. Thus, the importance of proper comprehension and documentation, to avoid any unnecessary conflicts & miscommunications. (It would be best to obtain proper legal advice on this aspect.)

6. Exit Strategy

No matter how rigid you stick to a guideline when you are in searching for a Co-Founder, in reality there will be different issues arising and it is perfectly ok for someone to leave. If there is a proper exit strategy this would be easy and smooth. Some may exit since they no longer believe in the idea, maybe they are presented with a greater opportunity elsewhere etc. Hence the importance of having a proper exit strategy and evaluating this option of your Co-Founder leaving, and how it would affect your dream startup. You should have proper measures in place in order to ensure that even though one-person leaves, the Startup has a succession plan to go forward.

Usually in my experience in most early stage startups with a small team, the departure of a key Founder disrupts the startup, thus the more importance on focusing on an exiting strategy.

In conclusion the list seems lengthy and challenging to find the perfect person. But it is always good to have a set of guidelines to think through to find a perfect mix of people to collectively achieve your dreams and make your startup a reality. Please feel free to add your comments on aspects which I have missed, which we could combine to enhance this thinking thought process / guideline. All the very best in your startup journey.

When you are solving a particular problem your knowledge or expertise plays a vital role. Problems are usually delegated towards experts in the respective domains. The experience & knowledge is key in most of these situations.

But quoting Master Yoda from Star Wars, “You must unlearn what you have learned” in some instances. The knowledge or experiences you possess may not be perfect, or it could be limiting your ability to achieve more.

For an example when you are solving a problem, the well known method would be perfect. But if you start analyzing from the basics and think new, there might be better solutions. This unlearning or fresh thinking would lead towards innovation.

Thus, it is evident that its always best to have an open mindset when you are working, so that you would be able to design and develop something really unique. The concept of unlearning helps you to look at things in a fresh mindset, leading you towards better understanding and ultimately better decisions.

This concept is not only applicable for scientific or high level problem solving leading to innovations. Unlearning could greatly help us in our day to day lives. People are normally conventional. All the decisions are based on some core beliefs & cultural insights that they have been taught. Based on those learning they try to take decisions, while in a biased state of mind.

Most of the social issues arise due to this restricted thinking, where they do not see the entire picture. Their arguments are based upon what they know, and how they see it. They do not take that extra effort to look at the problem from a fresh perspective. Usually this leads to great uncompromising debates. This is quite the same with their political views. Despite the current situation they always vote based on their core learning or principles, without any analysis. In order to truly succeed and learn it is important to be able to unlearn, look at the facts and take the correct decisions.

The reason why this thinking is not popular is due to the fact that, unlearning results in accepting a form of failure. When you unlearn something, you are challenged, something you truly believed in is challenged. Most of the cases people do not want to be challenged and accept that they were wrong. Hence they would keep on debating pointlessly. In conclusion it would be beneficial to unlearn and look at everything at an unbiased perspective.

This is not only applicable for us humans. It is also affecting our counterparts, Artificial Intelligence. Recently by mistake one of my pictures were tagged to a wrong person. And based on that input the algorithm kept on classifying the image wrong. No matter how many new pictures were newly fed and manually classified, there was no unlearning mechanism to undo. Failure to unlearn the mistake just kept on adding more mistakes.

In conclusion whether you are a machine or a human, unlearning is of great importance. One of the main reasons is the fact that knowledge changes with time, and what we believe to be true today could easily be replaced by a better theorem. Hence the importance of unlearning and tackling problems in a fresh unbiased perspective.

The subtle art of not giving a fck by Mark Manson presents an approach towards leading a good life, through understanding what to give a fck about and what not to. The world is complex, and there are many things that we are engaged with. This leads us towards worrying, thinking about various useless problems which affects are mental well being.

Today, we are trapped in social media which is slowly taking us away from the reality. We always hear about the successful stories of people and also the tragedies. These stories cover only a small percentage of people. The reality is that most of our stories are common or normal, which is perfectly ok. Mark explains how we make the mistake of trying to be extraordinary when in reality the majority of the world is normal, and there is no harm in being normal. By no means this indicates that we shouldn’t try to be successful, but rather we shouldn’t be obsessed about being successful and thus falling into an artificial misery.

Mark explains about the “Feedback Loop from Hell” where we are angry about feeing angry or, anxious about feeling anxious. When this happens you are stuck. We have to chose wisely what we want to give a fck about, and this decision should be combined with our values. As humans we will always need go give a fck about something, and that is actually what “living” means.

There wont be a life without problems. Don’t look for a life without problems. The reality is we need to identify what are the problems which are worth focussing on, which are related to our values. You should have a purpose, or goal which you are focussing on achieving. As an example, if you want to become an Engineer, that is your goal, the path towards achieving it will be filled with problems and obstacles. If you want to achieve your goal, you should face these problems, and there is no other way forward. When you are working on solving these problems, it will also be a form of happiness. You must focus on loving the process of achieving your goals through facing the problems, not just love the end result.

The next question to answer would be on how to select the right purpose and be driven through good values. The truth is if you are driven through bad values which are superstitious, socially destructive and which are not immediate or controllable, again you will be stuck in a loop where you will end up giving a f*ck about things which aren’t in your capacity to change. In contrast if your metrics or values are reality based, social constructive, immediate and controllable you will be able to successfully face your problems and achieve your goals.

These concepts are presented with simple historical examples and authors own life experiences which is really attractive and enables the reader to understand the concepts easily. I believe that the simple presentation of the concepts of real examples is a highlight of this book, as it evaluates real life scenarios which many of us have experienced.

We always try be positive and focus on positive thinking. Mark explains his views on how we should also embrace the negativity and accept it, rather than blindly seeking for positivity in every situation. Once you embrace the negativity and understands it fully it would be a form of true measurement of self worth of the feelings.

Finally in the later chapters core values towards self improvement are explained. How we should be responsible about our life and decisions we make, the truth about uncertainty and that we do not know everything about life is highlighted. Also the aspect of failure and how it is essential towards learning, how we should build our self to both say and hear rejection and finally about death which none of us can escape is explained.

In conclusion this read is quite fascinating, which explains about self improvement using examples which all of us will face in some point of life. These examples are able to attract the reader, and presents the concepts in a clear simple manner. However, it is important to note that even though you don’t need to give a fck about everything, when it comes to people and other aspects of life, even though you are not giving a fck, you shouldn’t be arrogant but rather be respectful. The book is influenced through some aspects of Buddhism and also research done by other individuals. My opinion is that “respect” is another crucial factor the author could have embedded within the book, while explaining the subtle art of not giving a f*ck.

If we want to be successful what should we do?

Success is not over night, it would require significant effort and commitment. And even though you have the required commitment and motivation, you may find yourself falling short. The simple but the surprising truth about success is “learning from failure”.

This might seem really simple. But Matthew illustrates the idea effectively using real world examples. The healthcare and aviation industry is introduced at the beginning, where real world scenarios are analyzed to identify important truths about success.

In the healthcare industry, annually 400,000 fatalities are caused by preventable medical error in the United States alone. This is equivalent to two Jumbo Jets falling out of the sky everyday.

Due to the errors made by Doctors a significant amount of lives are lost. When the two industries are analyzed at the early days, the aviation industry also incurred heavy losses due to the complexity of air travel. But as time progressed, these accidents were reduced significantly since they focussed on analyzing previous failure using the Black Box, identifying the root causes, eliminating them and disseminating the knowledge to all related parties in the world. Thanks to this approach today we are able to travel without much hesitation.

Healthcare is also a very complex industry, which may be more complex than aviation. Although, it should be noted that still the death toll is significant which occurs from medical error. This could be identified, as mainly due to the lack of a proper learning mechanism from failure.

Hence the importance of a Black Box Approach, where feedback about failure is identified and worked through in a open loop compared to a closed loop system which ignores the mistakes and failure.

Some people never learn from their mistakes. This can be identified through Cognitive Dissonance where people find their mistakes threatening to admit. Admitting to their failure undermines their ability and authority, thus people focus on covering up their mistakes and those mistakes are never surfaced. Mistakes are never learned resulting in the mistake recurring again & again…

Such examples in the criminal justice court system are presented where, innocent people are imprisoned and the reluctance towards the correction due to the concept of cognitive dissonance. This could be identified as a major constraint to achieve success.

Finally the book identifies the concept of Marginal Gains, where a small problem is separated into small pieces and efforts are combined to learn from minute failure and achieve success. The stories of Team Sky, the British professional cycling team, Formula one racing teams, and athletes such as Michael Jordan are presented to understand how they have reached success using this concept. They all learned from their failure, and failed on a number of occasions. The story of the invention of the Vacuum Cleaner by James Dyson after 5126 failed prototypes is also presented along with several other technology based innovations. The importance in the examples lies within the fact that in which ever the industry, occupation that you are working on, the Black Box approach is universal towards success. The phenomena of the Blame Game is also presented, where in some cases the focus is solely on blaming individuals for failure rather than the effort to identify the root causes in order to learn from failure.

In summary this is a good read to identify the key elements required to achieve success. The concepts are explained using real life examples which makes it an interesting read to gain knowledge on different aspects of the world history and success / failure stories enabling us to learn from the mistakes and shape our lives through a Black Box approach to achieve success.

Most of us in life follow the status quo, where we get in to a university and go for the highest paid job and get stuck in the never ending loop. If you are doing something you love as your job, you wont feel any frustration. But on the contrary a majority are stuck in job’s which they hate, or somehow the job does not make them happy…

Another important fact is people do not know what they love, what makes them happy, and what they really want to do. One must take sometime to understand what he or she really wants to do in life to be happy. This self understanding is really hard. You might easily get wrong, what you want. Its really important to understand deep down what you really want. Question your self why and dive deep in to find out what makes you really happy.

The answer you have right now for this question might not be accurate, where your real ambitions, likes hidden. These ambitions could easily be forgotten due to short term targets of money, fame etc. Once you identify what you really want I believe you would be able to enjoy the present moment. Doing what you love at the present moment enhances the quality of life.

Way too much of analysis into the future also forbids you to do what you really love. You might be scared to pursue your present interests thinking that it might affect your long term stability or financial position.

But the truth is at the present moment when you do what you love, it will extract the best in you. The best version, the best output of you would emerge. The continuous extraction of the best in you would help you towards greater value creation. Through focussing on what you love everyday I believe that you would be able to produce something really unique to the world, and the value you create would be far greater than sticking in with the conventional status quo.

I believe at least at the end you would have some self satisfaction of what you enjoyed, in the event you not achieving the expected success pursuing your dream.

This is just another idea that I have. In summary the hypothesis is…

“Continuously engaging in what you love to do at the present moment, will result in producing the greatest value creation, greatest impact that you can make in the world.”

At the present moment I do not have examples, facts to support my claim. But I’m currently trying to test out this hypothesis and focus on doing what I really love to see where it will take me.

When I ask the above questions from my self, I understood that I love to do research to work on new ideas and in the same time I love to write. Thus for the next 12 months I would be focussing on my research on Clardia and continue penning my thoughts in Olivescript. These were hard decisions to make considering the stability and financial security the other conventional options offered. However doing what I love to obtain the greatest happiness at the present moment seem a far better choice. (Touch wood & fingers crossed :D )

I would like to hear your thoughts and experiences on this idea. Whether this is indeed the best method where we can extract the best in people for significant value additions to the world. If this proves to be a solid method, it would help us to be successful & happy.

Please leave your thoughts in the comments section analyze the various aspects regarding this idea.

The following points are directly quoted from the book and presented in a summarized manner. We strongly urge you to read the book as it explains these concepts with clear real world examples through which we can learn a lot. The book contains rich real world examples on how these concepts have been used really effectively.

The intent of this article is to provide you a feel of the book and its importance so that you will be motivated towards reading.

Fundamental Techniques in Handling People

• Principle 1 - Don’t criticize, condemn or complain.
• Principle 2 - Give honest & sincere appreciation.
• Principle 3 - Arouse in the other person an eager want.

Six Ways to Make People Like You

• Principle 1 - Become genuinely interested in other people.
• Principle 2 - Smile.
• Principle 3 - Remember that a person’s name is to that person the sweetest and most importance sound in any language.
• Principle 4 - Be a good listener. Encourage others to talk about themselves.
• Principle 5 - Talk in terms of the other person’s interests.
• Principle 6 - Make the other person feel important and do it sincerely.

Win People to Your Way of Thinking

• Principle 1 - The only way to get the best of an argument is to avoid it.
• Principle 2 - Show respect for the other person’s opinions. Never say, “You’re wrong”.
• Principle 3 - If you are wrong, admit it quickly & emphatically.
• Principle 4 - Begin in a friendly way.
• Principle 5 - Get the other person saying “yes, yes” immediately.
• Principle 6 - Let the other person do a great deal of the talking.
• Principle 7 - Let the other person feel that the idea is his or hers.
• Principle 8 - Try honestly to see things from the other person’s point of view.
• Principle 9 - Be sympathetic with the other person’s ideas & desires.
• Principle 10 - Appeal to the nobler motives.
• Principle 11 - Dramatize your ideas.
• Principle 12 - Throw down a challenge.

Be a Leader

A leader’s job often includes changing your people’s attitudes & behavior. Some suggestions to accomplish this.

• Principle 1 - begin with praise & honest appreciation
• Principle 2 - Call attention to people’s mistakes indirectly.
• Principle 3 - Talk about your own mistakes before criticizing the other person.
• Principle 4 - Ask questions instead of giving direct orders.
• Principle 5 - Let other person save face.
• Principle 6 - Praise the slightest improvement & praise every improvement. Be “hearty in your approbation and lavish in your praise”.
• Principle 7 - Give the other person a fine reputation to live up to.
• Principle 8 - Use encouragement. Make the fast seem easy to correct.
• Principle 9 - Make the other person happy about doing the thing you suggest.

Seven Rules for Making Your Home Life Happier

• Rule 1 - Don’t nag.
• Rule 2 - Don’t try to make your partner over.
• Rule 3 - Don’t criticize.
• Rule 4 - Give honest appreciation.
• Rule 5 - Pay little attentions.
• Rule 6 - Be courteous.
• Rule 7 - Read a good book on the sexual side of marriage.

You are taught Engineering, Art, Medicine, Marketing… subjects when you specialize towards your profession. But are you taught how to Manage Your Personal Finance. If you are in the fields of accounting and finance you might be familiar with some of the concepts. But the truth is this is a core life lesson which all of us should be taught at school & university, to help us manage our own finance. You might feel that it is simple, but the truth is, these are the simple things which would decide whether you are going to be Rich or Poor.

If you don’t have a clue on how to be Rich or manage your personal finances, the book Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki may well be a good starting point for your financial future. The book presents you simply the core concepts on how to be rich, through the authors own life story and experiences. Its one of the many books written by Robert which is an easy read with many illustrations.

Some of the core principals presented in the book are summarized to help and motivate you towards reading. For all rational individuals Money is important. But the main mistake we make regarding Money is, either we are Afraid of Money, or we are Greedy for Money.

Most humans are driven by the Fear & Greed for money, where we do not grasp the core concepts of Money Making. When we fear money, we focus on our daily jobs to make money, which limits us on other investing opportunities presented to make money. When we receive our monthly salaries the Greed takes place which prompts us to work again, sticking to our jobs and continuing this cycle. In summary many of us are trapped in this cycle or the rat race where we start working on a job because we fear money and then keep on working due to the greed. The fear and greed limits us to grasp opportunities, use our minds to actually become Rich.

Don’t Work For Money, Instead let Money work for You!!!

The rich never work for money, instead they let money work for them. Normally when we look at the Rich, they seem to be living luxurious lifestyles with minimal effort. The key reason is Money is working for them. The Rich invests in assets. These assets generate revenue without much, or any intervention at all. Once they invest in assets, Money keeps working for them. The concepts and how to invest in the right assets are presented well in detail all throughout the book.

If you analyze the poor, the poor are only left with Liabilities & Expenses which lures them into the cycle. Those people would work all their life time paying debt for their home loans & mortgages. But you could avoid all these and work towards a stable financial position, simply following some general tips in money making identifying key investment opportunities. The importance is that any person with a good mind and intent can adopt these strategies to become Rich.

The book also unfolds the history of taxes and the power of corporations which are used effectively by the rich to keep on building their wealth. The practical examples and illustrations helps us to understand all these key concepts even for anyone without any financial knowledge.

All of you focus on your careers, learning new technologies and concepts in the relevant fields to become competent. Undoubtedly managing your personal finance is a subject important to all of you, irrespective of whatever job you do, whether you are still a student, whether you are Poor or Rich. Thus the importance of learning these importance life lessons reading on these concepts.

We strongly urge you to read this simple yet highly valuable book which would definitely add some value to your life. If you have any suggestions on other books related to personal finance, please a drop a comment below which would help others to enhance their knowledge on the subject.

The book covers some important aspects which should be addressed by startups when they pursue their venture, along with important details to build your future. The book contains many illustrations and presents concepts really simply, which enables anyone to quickly grasp and understand. I would like to summarize key concepts presented, and hope that it would inspire you to read this valuable book.

The book starts off with an important question,

## “What important truth do very few people agree with you on?”

This is the basis where the argument of working on novel ideas is highlighted in contrast to working on the same stuff carried out in the past. Thiel identifies that copying things that already work, only enables horizontal or extensive progress. He identifies this as going from 1 to n. Where there will be small incremental changes. The alternate is to focus on vertical or intensive progress where you work on doing new things, inventing new technologies, which is the only way we can go from 0 to 1. The idea is illustrated in the following diagram extracted from the book.

The book identifies concepts where it is better to risk boldness than triviality and how even a bad plan is better than having no plan when you start working. Also it highlights the importance of sales as much as the product which is often neglected. Both the Sales and the product should both be focussed on to achieve success.

Competitive markets destroys the potential profits. The book dives into identifying important facts about successful companies which focus on avoiding these issues. All happy companies are different, and because of that they are able to achieve a Monopoly Status. This is a concept which is highlighted where startups are urged to focus on differentiating themselves in the market that they operate. It also identifies the importance of clearly identifying this differentiating factor as sometimes we may well be trapped inside an illusion where our product is not so different than we think it is.

The examples how Amazon started off differentiating themselves in the niche market of selling books online initially, and how they eventually started to grow is presented in relation to these ideas of building a Monopoly. It also identifies the notion that the companies which already possess the Monopoly Status would lie to keep their monopoly status avoiding possible regulation. In contrast to companies in Perfect Competition, which would always try to lie or present themselves as different and unique among others.

The characteristics of a Monopoly are also identified as follows,

• Proprietary Technology
• Network Effect
• Economies of Scale
• Branding

First Mover Vs Last Mover These concepts are discussed where the first mover is identified not as a goal to achieve but rather as a tactic and that the last mover or the company who moved into the particular market last would make the largest great development and thus enjoy profits.

Many important concepts are discussed such as the Power Law and how venture capitalists uses it to build portfolios and the Founders Paradox, where founders traits are analyzed to identify what is required to build a great company. I do not wish to explain them in detail in this summary and strongly urge you to read the book and understand these concepts.

Sales concepts on how to sell a product are also identified for various types of target consumers and different types of marketing methods for each target segments. Finally I would like to present an interesting set of questions presented in the book, which encompass the entire spectrum of what we should answer when we are starting a company.

Seven Questions Every Company Must Answer,

• The Engineering Question - Can you create breakthrough technology instead of incremental improvements?
• The Timing Question - Is now the right time to start your particular business?
• The Monopoly Question - Are you starting with a big share of a small market?
• The People Question - Do you have the right team?
• The Distribution Question - Do you have a way to not just create but deliver your product?
• The Durability Question - Will your market position be defensible 10 & 20 years into the future?
• The Secret Question - Have you identified a unique opportunity that others don’t see?

I hope this small summary helped you in understanding the importance of the concepts presented in 0 to 1, to prompt you towards reading and gathering knowledge for a successful startup.

I would like to briefly summarize the main key elements I found interesting and useful in The Lean Startup. This would be the first of many articles which would focus on summarizing the most popular books on Startups & Entrepreneurs. I strongly urge you all to read all these books and not just be limited to the presented summary.

The book unveils all the concepts discussed using appropriate examples, and I wish to highlight those key concepts. When you commence a startup you have some new idea, a new way to do something. Will it work ? The thinking behind the idea… is it sound?

Hence its of great importance to validate the idea whether there is a significant value addition. This is called the Value Hypothesis. We need to conduct some quick tests to verify whether our hypothesis is sound. It should not be limited only to the value of the idea. The Growth Hypothesis ensures that even though there is value in the idea, whether it can achieve the expected growth. These should be clearly distinguished as sometimes even though the idea is unique and creates value, in terms of growth it would be stunted. If we pursue in the particular path without any idea of the growth you might end up in a position after some time where you cannot achieve the level of success you wanted.

Just think you worked on your bright idea for so long and after some time you find, that it is not going to work. It would be a complete waste of resources, time… a complete disaster in the end!!!

This would have been avoided if you focussed on Validated Learning where you make sure that the product development is carried out appropriately through continuous learning. This is called the build, measure, learning cycle.

Build -> Measure -> Learn

If we focussed on building the product step by step validating the decisions that we take using the valuable feedback, it will enable us to make the necessary changes and pivoting required before ending up building something useless. This is of great importance, to build something really quick and deploying to see the feedback, and thus through the learning steer your product / service towards success. We require metrics to set targets and compare our continuous iterations. The higher the frequency of the build, measure, loop higher the amount of learning we acquire. Although, it is important to setup proper metrics to set targets and monitor progress. These are called Actionable Metrics. It is important to select these metrics appropriately as you do not want to fall into the trap of setting Vanity Metrics which would ruin you in future. For a simple example, even though the number of registered users are increasing drastically if the retention or active users are dropping setting a metric to measure number of registered users will be useless. In order to measure these metrics and conduct analysis techniques such as the Cohort Analysis and A/B Testing can be used.

Once you successfully go through the loop along with the focus on actionable metrics, you would be able to get a clear understanding whether to Pivot or Persevere. Pivoting is not a bad thing, maybe a small setback on your initial value hypothesis. But it would be essential for success. Pivoting could be in the form of technology pivot, channel pivot, platform pivots etc. This setup ensures that a quick pivot could be done if needed, which reduces the risk of being stuck.

Eric Ries then focuses on Engines of Growth. In a quick summary it focuses on the different types of growth a company could achieve. Such as the Viral engine of growth, where how you could grow virally. The viral coefficient would be a crucial factor in this case. Sticky engine of growth focusses on retaining customers in the long run, where the focus would be on the new customer acquisition rate (NCA) and the Custer churn rate(CCR). Paid engine of growth focusses on the cost per customer acquisition(CPA) and the life time value (LTV) of the customer.

The concept of Innovation Accounting is also fascinating where the focus would be on measuring the true progress without stifling the innovation compared to conventional mindsets. How innovation could be driven in larger organizations is also discussed clearly, and how the cultures should be properly setup.

Finally, the 5 Why Concept is presented where we could focus on drilling on a problem to find the root cause. This will enable to understand the important reasons of failure which could be easily hidden. For an example in case of a failure of a server the team could gather and search for the reasons of failure?. If the failure was due to a bug, they would keep drilling down to see why the bug was introduced? It could be due to a new recruit who wasn’t given a sufficient training. Likewise important conclusions and insights could be gathered using this technique and valuable adjustments made. It should be done mindfully to ensure that the focus is on correction rather than pointing fingers, in which case it could easily become the 5 blames, everyone pointing at each other and blaming of failure.

Apart from the summarized concepts mentioned above, there are many other interesting concepts discussed in the book which you could read through. Again I would like to stress the value of reading the book to grasp all this concepts presented clearly with the help of examples. I hope the above short summary would be a motivator for you to start reading and adding greater value to your self as well as your entrepreneurial journey.

Good Luck!