Startups and Daughters

As an enterpreneur you should definitely not be emotionally bound to any single project. They are like daughters who go away getting married. Its good that they leave. However you never forget them and you take all the care to raise them.

Two articles which sum up the discussion about funding and ways of funding for a startup -

"Whether to grow slowly, organically, and profitably, or whether to have a big bang with very fast growth and lots of capital." - Joel Spolsky

"Venture funding works like gears. A typical startup goes through several rounds of funding, and at each round you want to take just enough money to reach the speed where you can shift into the next gear." - Paul Graham

I am noting them down here for a later reference. I know about Google's notebook and I really like it, but these articles are worth more than a note.

India's Shashti Poorthi

Two things that bother me on the eve of this 60th year of Indian Independence.

First, a country with such diversity (a wonderfully written article by Dasarathi describes it in such beauty) has been plagued by reservations which divides the nation like the British did.

Second, our lack of innovation for our own people and the extent of dependence of Indians of things that are foreign. We cant think for ourselves and that's a pity for people who were considered really brainy.

The speech that was made on that day should not remain as just a speech. I have been reading "Discovery of India" and I dont like the conclusions that are drawn by Nehru. History is not about conclusions. When they are included by the author, it assumes an authentic form which people will believe as the reality, whereas it is just another perception.

And one thing that I am really hoping that will save this country is the youth, the current generation. They just have to take control of their own destiny.

Mt.Hamilton

Raghavan sent me this snapshot of Sandeep, himself and myself on Mt.Hamilton in 2001, I guess. How much I loved to trek and get into the wild side. Now that I am in Bangalore, its tough to find any kind of vegetation except in places like IISc or Lalbagh. Unable to breath in this place anymore.

Rang De Basanti

Watched "Rang de basanti". It really turned on its head half way through and got me all excited. This is going into my list of "must-own" movies.

http://www.bharat-rakshak.com/IAF/Info/Aircraft/MiG-Prodyut.html

The less you pay respect to quality, the more it will bite you. Life without reverence to quality is worse than that of animals. Compromising and accepting things of less quality is one example. I guess this is one thing we as indians need to learn, i.e. not compromising on quality be it at the giving or receiver's end.

Reservation policy

There has been so much of opposition and strikes against the reservation policy. I donot understand how somebody who belongs to these categories can accept such reservation policy.

Wouldnt it mean that they are not talented enough to fight for a seat through their sheer merit. They should be not wanting such a scheme which belittles them and discriminates them. This shows that they are themselves ok with this kind of discrimination against them. They should stop blaming others.

Madappaiah, My GGPa

For the purposes of posterity I am putting these "facts" down here. The validity of some of these have to be verified. This is more of a legend at present.

Krishnaiah built the "Nela Mane" (the first/initial/source house). He had three sons - Keshava, Madhava, Govinda. Madhappaiah (Madhava) is my great grand father. Madhappaiah had two wives. The first wife (name unknown) gave birth to sons Anand Rao and Narasinga Rao (the person responsible for bringing sons of Madappaiah to Kakinada). Anand Rao has a son Vyasa Rao and Narasinga Rao has four sons - Rajgopal, Chandrashekar, Ramachandra and Anand Rao (II).

Madappaiah's second wife, my GG Ma's name is Padmavati who gave birth to four sons Ramakrishnaiah, Srinivasa Rao, Lashmi Narayana Rao, Seetharama Rao. Ramakrishnaiah was the eldest of them.


The ancestral home and property were built by GG Pa at around 1890. He was the "Seneyaru" at the Adamar matha in Yermal. (My dad says Uchila and a great part of Padubidri as well). What this means is that he was like a civil court taking care of issues that pertained to land, family fueds and overseeing the maintainance of Adamar matha. Its been said that quite a bit of land that belongs to the family has been gifted by the matha. A boulder on the beach towards padubidri represents his jurisdiction. (Photo of the boulder coming here). This boulder is even named after my GGPa.

The other three sons (Seetharaama, Srinivasa, Lakshmi Narayana), left home at Yermal in search of work and prosperity. They settled in coastal Andhra Pradesh in and around Kakinada. They established restaurants serving Udupi style cooking and are doing well. They gave all the powers on the ancestral land to their eldest brother.

Clippings

It's better to tell a short story well, than a long one poorly.
Source: http://37signals.com/16.html

He who knows not and knows not that he knows not, he is a fool. Shun him
He who knows not and knows that he know not is preachable. Teach him
He who knows and knows that he knows is great. Follow him.
In addition, something that Bannanje said -
He who knows and knows not that he knows, is greater. Worship him.
Source: Unknown

“Perfection is attained not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing more to remove”
- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Oasis in the desert

Its where we are currently living. A desert! Full of constraints and thirst. Dont really know why we are here in the first place. There is one truth, the absolute truth which definitely brings hope. The truth is that there is a oasis in this desert. Allide nammane, illiruvudu summane.

The fact that we see mirages and comprehend it, proves the existence of the oasis. If we had not seen water ever, we would not be able to see the illusion of water at all.

If the oasis were to be in the center of the desert, every person is at a different place at a different angle with respect to the oasis. Each person might be travelling towards the oasis in a different direction and a different path. One person's path which might be taking him towards the oasis might take another person at a different place away from it. Every person's path is as distinct as he or she is. There are ofcourse some highways, some proven ways but they might not always be available to everybody, nor is it mandatory for everybody to take the highway.

Finally we need to be told about the direction towards the oasis by someone who can see it or who has seen it and has come down from the oasis to take us home. However, there might also be such people who think that they are seeing the oasis while looking at mirages. Then it would be really dangerous for us to follow such illusionists.

Notes from "The Art of Unix Programming"

Some quotes from the book -

For this historical sketch, it will be sufficient to note the impact of the first one's central formula: “Given a sufficiently large number of eyeballs, all bugs are shallow”.

For most hackers and almost all nonhackers, “Free software because it works better” easily trumped “Free software because all software should be free”.

Being smarter than anyone else about important but narrow issues of software design didn't prevent us from being almost completely blind about the consequences of interactions between technology and economics that were happening right under our noses. Even the most perceptive and forward-looking thinkers in the Unix community were at best half-sighted. The lesson for the future is that over-committing to any one technology or business model would be a mistake — and maintaining the adaptive flexibility of our software and the design tradition that goes with it is correspondingly imperative.