MoBlogging

Trying out this new MoBlog feature.

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Samir R. Shah
skype: samir.r.shah

Elements of Sustainable Companies

I came across this data when doing some research for work; and think it is extremely useful in building your own company. I'll certainly use it in building my own company.

Elements of Sustainable Companies

Clarity of Purpose
Summarize the company's business on the back of a business card.

Large Markets
Address existing markets poised for rapid growth or change. A market on the path to a $1B potential allows for error and time for real margins to develop.

Rich Customers
Target customers who will move fast and pay a premium for a unique offering.

Focus
Customers will only buy a simple product with a singular value proposition.

Pain Killers
Pick the one thing that is of burning importance to the customer then delight them with a compelling solution.

Think Differently
Constantly challenge conventional wisdom. Take the contrarian route. Create novel solutions. Outwit the competition.

Team DNA
A company's DNA is set in the first 90 days. All team members are the smartest or most clever in their domain. "A" level founders attract an "A" level team.

Agility
Stealth and speed will usually beat-out large companies.

Frugality
Focus spending on what's critical. Spend only on the priorities and maximize profitability.

Inferno
Start with only a little money. It forces discipline and focus. A huge market with customers yearning for a product developed by great engineers requires very little firepower.

George Orwell - On Writing

Someone recommended this short essay to me to improve my writing. It is extremely well-written and best of all, easy to understand. Here are a few lines that stuck with me:

• The whole tendency of modern prose is away from concreteness.
  
• A scrupulous writer, in every sentence that he writes, will ask himself at least four questions:
  
  (1) What am I trying to say?
  (2) What words will express it?
  (3) What image or idiom will make it clearer?
  (4) Is this image fresh enough to have an effect?
  
  And he will probably ask himself two more:
  
  (1) Could I put it more shortly?
  (2) Have I said anything that is avoidably ugly?
  
• The sole aim of a metaphor is to call up a visual image.
  
• ...political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness.
  
• When the general atmosphere is bad, language must suffer. I should expect to find—this is a guess which I have not sufficient knowledge to verify—that the German, Russian and Italian languages have all deteriorated in the last ten to fifteen years, as a result of dictatorship.
  
• But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.
  
• Probably it is better to put off using words as long as possible and get one's meaning as clear as one can through pictures and sensations.
  
• ...one needs rules that one can rely on when instinct fails. I think the following rules will cover most cases:
  
  (1) Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
  (2) Never use a long word where a short one will do.
  (3) If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
  (4) Never use the passive where you can use the active.
  (5) Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everday English equivalent.
  (6) Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.
  
• Language [is] an instrument for expressing and not for concealing or preventing thought.
  
  
  

Millionaire thoughts of the day

Thanks to Mitubhai:

• People who say they want to become a millionaire but are unwilling to back it up with hard work are only fooling themselves.
  
• If you want to be wealthier, start thinking like you’re already there.
  
• If the financial advice you’ve been getting hasn’t proven itself effective, then toss it out and rebuild your financial beliefs from ground zero. If you want to become a millionaire in 10 years or less, you can’t subscribe to the 40-year skimp-and-save approach. Sure you can save your way to a million in 40 years, but you can earn your way there a lot faster.
  

Books I want to read

The Power of Nice - Thaler
The Kindness Revolution - Horrell

Quote from Stephen Levine

"If you had an hour to live and could make just one call, who would it be to—and what would you say—and why are you waiting?"

What I took from "The World Is Flat "

So I finished the popular "The World Is Flat" book by Friedman a few months ago. I try to take notes and jot down the interesting things from the book (so I don't forget it). And instead of piling up sheets of paper, I type all those ideas up here:

• Bin Laden is to the Arab masses what O.J. was to many American blacks—the stick they poke in the eye of an unfair America and their own leaders.
• HUMILIATION MAKES PEOPLE DO NASTY THINGS
• Dyab Abou Jahjah - the "Malcolm X" of Belgium's alienated Moroccan youth
• Salman Rushdie - The Satanic Verses
• 16 of the 20 most polluted cities in the world are in China. Approximately 1,000 cars are being added EACH DAY in Beijing.
• China's foreign policy consists of 2 things: preventing Taiwan from becoming independent and searching for oil.
• On an average day, Dell sells an average of 140,000 - 150,000 computers.
• "Nuclear Terrorism: The Ultimate Preventable Catastrophe" by Graham Allison
• A challenge to our will and convictions, not our capabilities. It can be done!
• MEGALOMANIACAL
• "Imagination is more important than knowledge" - Albert Einstein
• "On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog"
• David Needelman - founder of JetBlue Airways
• Apropos(?)
• Do you have more memories than dreams or more dreams than memories? (Look forward)
• The country with the largest Muslim population in the world is Indonesia. 2nd Largest - India.
• RESEARCH: Lenin, Mussolini, Polpot, Ho Chi Minh, Marxism, Arun Sarin
• If you don't have goals, you keep on running from one side to the other on the field without scoring any goals.
• the BEST companies outsource to win, not to shrink. They outsource to innovate faster and more cheaply in order to grow larger, gain market share, and hire more and different specialists - not to save money by firing more people.
• Today, my first management job out of B-school could be melding the specialties of a knowledge team that is 1/3 in India, 1/3 in China, and 1/6 in Palo Alto and Boston. That takes a very special kind of skill and is going to be much in demand in the flat world.

Ladder Theory

For all the males out there, check out this site:

www.laddertheory.com

HILARIOUS!

Females: this website is very useful for you too.