Sunday, April 20, 2008

MISSION IMPOSSIBLE 2008 #$%~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Fear..... the one thing which I hate the most... each of us are scared of so many things around and in the current sophisticated and line driven lifestyles, we never realize rather would say, are never bothered about our fears and on how to over come them.... I always believe that doing things which you are scared of is the only way to get away with it. Thinking about this, i had a weird thought in my head, to try out some adventure for year 2008 and would probably will try to take it forward every year trying something new. So here we go.....

I wanted to go get to a remote place or far from the city I currently live in, ask my friends to take away all my cash, cards, cellphone and leave me alone with my Identity Card which says who I am. Just not to be too much adventurous (which I would luv to) i might try out my target between San Antonio, TX and Austin, TX. I really wanted to see what I would do to get from San Antonio to Austin and off course the last option is to go to a COP, but now that really is not an adventure anymore. I would rather try to do something..like.. trying to earn money within a short span of time with what I am and what I can do at that moment. 

I believe there will be great lessons which learnt from this adventure. Keep waiting for my results of this adventure...

 


My first $10 out of Fire4Innovation initiative

Before getting to the $10, leeme talk about why I have to re-create this group with different direction. I came across 1000's of ppl who say we have to do it, we will do it, we do it like etcc... but I wanted to see ppl doing things rather than saying. Now how would a person get to the next setup of doing things from saying things. Its pretty simple, he first should be knowing exactly what he want to do and then finally put his thoughts around it and get to point where he would strongly believe this is what he always wanted to do.

The other side of the story is there are ppl like Sir richard branson who have imagineered the world with Ecstasy and always act first then speak. These ppl just do it first and then start thinking how to make it better & the best.

As we see actions are output of thoughts and if there are no thoughts then there is no point of discussion. The most important thing in a entrepreneurs life is the thought process. As I always believe in encouraging entrepreneurship, I wanted to invoke the thought process within ppl who has even a niche of entrepreneur spirit.

Yaaa...finally i said it.. "Invoking thought process". I created this group within my friends to achieve a target "To earn $10 within a week".

Here are the list of rules:
  1. Each member has to earn $10 in a week with a creative idea, not doing anything one currently does.
  2. The type of work being done for a week should not be repeated for the next $10 for follow-on weeks.
  3. The proof of the earning and the idea should be proven at the end of each cycle. The best idea and productive earning will be re-payed a cash prize donated by the other members.This is a serious group with a vision to make ppl think and make ppl do things which was always pending in their life.

Future vision of this initiate: Doing this frequently will invoke a great thought process which can lead to the best process of value and wealth creation.

Lets now talk about my $10 for the first week in april.

At last, I got my $10 within a week. I guess it was not a great start but at least was a start :)

Action: I inducted my colleague about the basics of startup (types of corporations, taxations, business plan, business process overview, complications per his current work authorization and contract status, tips & tricks to get along with the taxes, list of actions for getting a firm up and running, payroll basics and some misc info).

Pending follow-on tasks: Inducting in Business Plans, preparations for BP, walking through venture cycle, importance of focus on customer, realization of target business and finally helping in defining the business.

Value: Sharing inbound experiences in startups and trying to clearup the common assumptions of startup for like mind entreprenuers.

Future outcome: As a matter of fact, there are 1 million firms getting registered in US every year and this show the potential market for creating a management consulting firm for basic entrepreneurs or any business startups.

Risk and economic viability: Startups always are short of money and are looking for any tiny thing to cut down their cost and this would contradict our theory of ppl spending money on their initial stages of starting business.

Justification of the risk: 50% of the people get their startup basics from references and discussion with ppl around them and rest of them who are kinda "do it urself" go and research books and internet to get the stuff done. But both segments of the ppl would always encourage some to professionally guide them to review what they want to do and how they want to do and gauge their vision. And some times ppl get to realise the real potential of their business which they would have never identified without talking to others.

Conclusion: A market research on startups and SMB would allow us to prove if this idea of management consulting for startup is really a viable venture.

Sunday, April 06, 2008

FIRE4INNOVATION - My first offical Entreprenuer group

I officially started my entrepreneur career 2 yrs back after realizing few practical realities of implementation. Prior to this official start, I was searching for the ONE THING and had started to outline all domains where I can fit into. Then shortlisted Entertainment and IT as it has something to do me with or my experience. As a daily routine, I had to come up with at least 1 idea which I thought was little creative against the existing process and procedures. The next thing would be google on the idea and industry to find exactly where I stand in the world. As a matter of fact, initially, it was obvious for me to realize that I just woke up from the sleep when compared against the world. As, I was getting exhausted doing this exercise, I had to find a way to keep this thought process live and I saw few thing in me first. In the first place I was not a creative person and also was not a technically sound enough who can write the most weirdest algorithms, there were so many qualities which does not exist in me and so to fill this gap I just looked at the corporate world and then wanted to do the same thing ..... get the resources who has the right skill set and collective thought process is 100 times better than single mans thought process. I started a group FIRE4INNOVATION with couple of my trusted friends calling them up and lecturing, provoking 'em about entrepreneurship. The rules for the group was, each has to post a new topic of discussion and other has to post their comments against it. There was a good brainstroming session going around in the group and to keep up the spirit I injected a rule saying 'if the member of the group does not respond for a week he will be outcasted out of the group'. I had once thrown out all of the members out of the group and then got them back to re-start the discussions. One thing I realized that provoking someone for entrepreneurship will never make it happen in 90% cases but there are little chances that they could at least start on that path of the career if they of that kind.

List of things I learned out of this exercise:

  1. Anything you do should be targeted with timeline strictly with self disciple.
  2. Always discuss your idea with a group of ppl who can at least think, as no one here is god to know everything or even thing in every direction.
  3. Take the +ve side of the discussion and research the -ve side. Rather than getting emotional try to find and prove that -ve point with analysis and convince the other person. With my experience this exercise will remove at least 5% of your assumption around the idea and will also get you into the idea analysis stage - or even called as MARKET RESEARCH in terms of Business Plan.
  4. NEVER IGNORE ANY POINT OF ARGUMENT as this could cover your primary risk identification and mitigation plan.

    I always kept telling ppl one thing - a difference between Business Vs Entrepreneurship. Making money with money is Business Vs Making money with value and service with a passion of creativity and innovation is Entrepreneurship . Money is one thing which entrepreneur’s are least worried about at least in the stage of nurturing their idea or framing out the plan of implementation or execution.

    I will talk about the outcome of these discussions into a VENTURE in my later blog.

Thursday, April 03, 2008

Game of IT Contracting

As a MOF, 70% of nri's career journey starts in the world of IT contracting. Even with tonnes of problems, pains, frustration in IT contracting the market is still a sweet pot for making quick money for everyone and thats the reason there is always a new staffing firm showing of every day.

I will talk about the whole topic in detail in my later blogs but currently i am gathering facts and statistics about the current IT contracting, so that we can speak out with completely logical point of proof.

Please feel free to take the below survery which measure few pain point of IT contracts, staffing, recruiting, H1B's etc...

Click Here to take survey