Lesson # 54 : Have we changed the definition of the word entrepreneur?

There's this sudden craze all around. Everyone wants to suddenly leave their job and do the unconventional. Everyone imagines that in the very first try they are going to set up the next Facebook, Apple or Google.
Almost every second person things he or she is going to create a business, scale it and eventually sell it for millions. The point being most of us today have started to link entrepreneurship to a quick fix solution to our long term wealth problem.

What right does one have to call himself/herself an entrepreneur if their sole purpose is to make money. They are capitalists at best. But entrepreneurs? Hell no.

What right does a person who jumps from one business idea to another without successful execution of even a single idea have to call himself/herself an entrepreneur?

What right does a person who simply copies the business model of another have the right to call himself/herself an entrepreneur. He/She is simply a thief.

These are simple questions that have simple answers. Most of the readers shall state but what right has Mark Zuckerberg to call himself an entrepreneur when he simply lifted the concept of Facebook from the Winkelvosses and Divya Narendra. What right has Steve Jobs to call him an entrepreneur when he was simply a marketer?

The world is changing and the lines between a businessmen and entrepreneur, an entrepreneur and a marketer have started to diminish.

As with everything else we have started to rethink and reinvent traditional definitions of the word 'Entrepreneur'.

The question that remains is whether changing the definition is the solution? Are we ready to accept Entrepreneurs as they are being shaped  or are we ready to draw lines to clearly demarcate who we wish to see as an entrepreneur. Perhaps this is wishful thinking but then again it may not be.

On behalf of Doodle inc
Udit Sabharwal

Lesson # 53 : Going East

Everything that we see around us be it the television, the ipad, the iphone, the kindle or even the very laptop that the author is using to type this article all of these have a common thread running through each of them. Apart from being modern marvels of the 21st century each of these have been manufactured in China.

Most of the readers at this point of time shall put forward the simple question, "So what's the big deal?"

This trend is an indication of where the world is headed. A greater number of American Corporations are outsourcing or rather already have successfully outsourced their manufacturing to China.

While this trend has been seen primarily in Electronics other industries such as Clothing, Footwear etc are also following suit.

This in itself has created a sort of Symbiotic relationship between the creators and the manufacturers.

We need to clearly establish that if we are taking the example of Apple and their Iphone. Then in this case while the world may predominantly think that the Iphone was manufactured by Apple what must be stated is that Apple is simply the creator.

Hence, generalising this we can state that the creator is a company that is behind the research and development of the product, it is also in charge of marketing and selling the product, it is even in charge of after sales service and repairs. But the creator is not in charge of manufacturing the product.

The world over it is known that a greater number of Apple products are manufactured by Foxconn. Hence, in this case Foxconn is the manufacturer and not Apple.

This simple example is an indicator of where the world is headed. Most of the big brands of the world would rather spend on research and development rather than manufacture good solid hardware.

Though, this trend is now slowly seeing a change with Motorola deciding to set up a factory and employ local workers from nearby states in the US.

What needs to be seen however in the coming years is whether if large corporations shall be able to balance out their research and development and new products with good solid hardware manufacturing done locally in factories set up in the country of origin of these global conglomerates.

On behalf of Doodle inc
Udit Sabharwal

Lesson # 52 : Breaking Bad George Soros Style

So we all would have come across the name George Soros at some point of time be it in magazines, in the newspaper or on television. Here's an overview of how he broke the bank of England one fine day. A brilliant bed time read for want to be billionaires.

Precursor be born in a country like Hungary and then migrate to Great Britain after the second world war.

Step 1 : Go to a bad ass college to the tune of the London School of Economics and then hang out with the coolest set of people out there. The person in reference is Karl Popper.

Step 2 : Travel here and there go have a few misses at Wall Street and get the tag of a cheap financier.

Step 3 :  Set up a fancy named hedge fund something like “Quantum” and then hire minions and a lot of them to do a lot of technical analysis for you.

Step 4 : By the year 1980 make around 17 million pounds and ensure that the fund is valued at thrice that number.

Step 5 : Watch, Analyse and Get information out of every son of a gun who is willing to speak.

Step 6 : Make an informed decision study the fundamentals, technical’s or just get it out of people with power.

Step 7 : Borrow the sterling to the tune of 6.5 Billion pounds randomly. From friends, neighbours, fellow investment bankers. Anyone who cares to hand it over.

Step 8 : Convert it into a safer currency one such as the Deutsche Mark or the French Frank.

Step 9 : Wait

Step 10 : Watch from the luxury of a 5 star hotel as things fall in place and widen your smile like the Grinch.

Step 11 : At the same time put money in equities as you know anything you do right now is going to work out.

Step 12 : Watch Again

Step 13 : Holy crap! That’s two in a row.

Step 14 : Imagine yourself as Scrooge Mc Duck and swim in a pool of money.

Step 15 : Be an ass, realize you are mortal and hand over a part of it to charity.

Lesson # 51 : Greed for lack of a better word is good

It's been 26 years since Wall Street first hit theatres but today more than ever Gordon Gekko's words ring true in our ears. His iconic speech when he is about to take over Teldar paper serves as a reminder of how money centric society has become.

For those of you who have not watched the film I would suggest you to get out of your caves and go to your local video store and rent the film immediately. Still here's the entire speech if you are too lazy to get up and go for a walk.

It's ironic as to what we have come to. Society judges a man not by the intellect and thought process or his character but by the jingling of money in his pockets. The days of wisdom have come to pass and men are judged by the brand of clothes and watches. They are judged not by who they are or what they stand for but by the people who stand by them and the cars they drive and the gadgets they own. 

An entangled matrix of greed and wealth has come to be formed. It's come a lot later than when Gordon Gekko predicted it. Perhaps we have started feeling it's consequences today. Greed seems to be a never ending spiral and no matter how far we travel along it it never seems to end.

More fittingly the reason for this can be scientific as well. A study of the theory of relativity will provide evidence that assuming everything is relative greed would also be a part of that wholesome set.

Thus, greed will never get satisfied not today, not tomorrow, not ever.

Meeting one target will force us into an abyss to achieve another target. One million, Two million and so on. It's a never ending spiral and it's not going to stop. 

And so let's take solace in the fact that even though we are not stupid or foolish we are ignorant beings who will still believe and follow in Gordon Gekko's footsteps for

"Greed is Good and the number is more"

Lesson # 50 : The battle of the Cokes

So the story goes thus sitting in a group of about 10 people my mind wandered off to the age old question of why the fountain coke tasted much better than a bottled or a canned coke? Then I started to think of another question at the same time. In a country like India compared to the time of local restaurants serving fountain coke or pepsi today a majority of the food and retail chains offer bottled coke. And that brought me to think of another pertinent question as to whether McDonald's which happens to not only have the largest fast food retail chain network in the country has perfected a recipe for global world dominance. A few seconds later I realized I may have gone too far. But as I walked past Domino's, Pizza hut and other chains I realized it just may be too crazy to be right.

So I thought of writing this article more out of amusement and because well honestly I haven't posted on The Blog in a long time. 

Let's start out with a history of the soda fountain.The term soda water was first coined in the year 1798 while the first Soda fountain was invented by Simon and Rundell of Charleston in South Carolina in the year 1810. The revolution and evolution of the soda fountain came in the year 1903 when Doctor Heisinger patented the front service fountain.

Having touched on the history aspect there's an old quote

"Necessity is the mother of invention"

The whole concept of the soda fountain arrived from tradition this can be verified from the fact that the soda fountain was actually an attempt to replicate the mineral waters that bubbled from the earth. So the question is firstly is there a difference in taste?

Yes there is and while there isn't any research that I could find to back this there were however evidences for the same. 

The reason for a difference in taste of a fountain soda and a bottled coke is something like this. In a bottled or a canned coke the syrup and Carbon-dioxide are mixed in a fixed proportion. Whereas for fountain soda each establishment that has a fountain soda can alter the amount of syrup and carbon-dioxide that enters the coke hence not all fountain cokes will taste the same. 

Moreover, ice mixed with fountain coke creates a separate taste as it dilutes the syrup in most cases. 

So that being done let's look at it from an economic perspective. Is the hight cost of a fountain coke justified? 

Put simply it's difficult to judge so let's do a relative comparison.

Criteria	Fountain	Bottle	Can
Volume	249 ml	600 ml	330 ml
Price	55	30	25
Price per ml	0.22	0.05	0.07
Premium Paid	340%	-	40%

Once I completed the table I stood up walked to my kitchen drank a glass of coke. It tasted better now. 

So to conclude

Taste will be relative and you cannot say whether fountain is better or bottled coke or canned coke. It's a matter of perspective and each individuals perspective shall vary.

Also, it is without doubt that I can say that out of the three assuming you are receiving a common product it is highly stupid to consume fountain coke.

Happy Drinking

On behalf of Doodle inc

(Udit Raj Sabharwal) 

Yahoo!!!!! 15 things that everyone knows

1. Found by David Filo and Jerry Yang in January 1994

2.David Filo and Jerry Yang were students at Stanford University just like their counterparts Larry Page and Sergey Brin and started Yahoo as "Jerry and David's Guide to the World Wide Web"

3.Yahoo stands for Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle

4.Yahoo is also a fictitious race in the book Gulliver's travels by Jonathan Swift.

5. In 2008 Microsoft tried to takeover Yahoo they failed and started Bing.

6. Yahoo went on a massive spending spree some of the services they bought served as a backdrop for upcoming services. In 1997, they bought Four11 whose product Rocket mail was re-developed as Yahoo Mail,Classicgames.com set the backdrop for Yahoo Games and eGroups became Yahoo groups in 2000.

7. Yahoo Messenger was initially called Yahoo Pager. 

8. During the dotcom bubble Yahoo and Ebay were planning a 50/50 merger. 

9. Similar to Google Picassa Yahoo owns Flickr #CopycatJoe

10. Yahoo has had quite a few CEO's ranging from Tim Koogle (1995-2001), Terry Semel(2001-2007), Jerry Yang (2007-2009), Carol Bartz( 2009-2011),Tim Morse( 2011-2012), Scott Thompson (January 2012- May 2012), Ross Levinsohn and finally now Marissa Mayer.

11. Marissa Mayer is an ex-employee of Google. #Lookhowthetidehasturned

12.Yahoo recently acquired Summly from a teenager. #Signofthingstocome

13.Yahoo's board also approved a buy out of the popular blogging site tumblr.

14.Initially Yahoo made use of Google for their search. #Bigmistake

15.Yahoo tried to buy facebook but the deal fell apart. Similarly, when they tried to buy Youtube Google outbid them.Google did the same thing again when they outbid buyers to buy Doubleclick #Life'sabitch

Google 101 : 21 things only Google

1.Founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin.

2.Initially nicknamed as Backrub.

3.Google is derived from the word Googol which means 10 to the power of 100.

4.Google first set up office in Susan Wojcicki's garage and she also happens to be Google's first employee and "the most important googler you have never heard of"

5.The first round of venture funding for Google came from Andy Bechtolsheim who happens to be the co-founder of SUN Microsystems (Stanford University Network).

6.When Google went public with their IPO they raised exactly $2,718,281,828, which is the product of "e" and $ 1 Billion, where "e" is the base of the natural logarithm-a logarithm especially useful in calculus- and equals about 2.718281828.

7.Goog is Google's ticker symbol on the NYSE and GGQ1 on the Frankfurt stock exchange.

8.Google is now a word in the Merriam Webster Dictionary and you'll find it's usage as "To use Google search engine to find information from the internet"

9. Google has bought a host of companies and products a few prominent ones being Picasa, Android, Youtube, Feedburner and Motorola among many others.

10. Google's long list of products include Google Search, Gmail, Google Books,Google Adwords, Google Docs, Google Maps, Google+ and Google drive among many others.

11. Google also happens to be the pioneer in operating system development with one web browser Chrome, an operating system based on Chrome called chrome os, a mobile based open source operating system called android and Google TV.

12. Google's corporate headquarters is called the Googleplex.

13.Google uses a technique called motivation time off giving employees about 20% of their working time to work on a project they truly believe in. Some of Google's grandest innovations such as Gmail, Google maps etc have been an outcome of this practise.

14. Marissa Mayer Google's first female engineer left Google to join Yahoo in 2012.

15. On 4 April, 2011 Eric Schmidt the company's long serving CEO stepped down to allow Larry Page to fill his shoes.

16. Google was a pioneer in social networking till Facebook shot into the limelight. At one point of time Orkut was ruling the roost.

17. The first Google doodle of the Burning Man was designed by Larry Page and Sergey Brin to notify users of their absence in case the servers crashed. 

18. Google has been forever known for their timeless April Fools Jokes including MentalPlex, Pidgeon Rank, Google Copernicus Centre, Google Gulp, Google Romance, Gmail Paper and this years Google Nose beta.

19. New Google employees are called Nooglers.

20. Google has announced a plan with Virgin to establish a permanent community on Mars. The project has been called Virgle.

21. Google's upcoming project Google Glass is going to be a game changer in all likelihood along with it's Nexus Range of Phones and Tablets.

Lesson # 49: Infy Infy sat on a wall, Infy Infy had a great fall

Yesterday Infosys fell. And while I would love to dissect that entire process of Infosys falling I think perhaps it’s time that industry veterans, your next door mom and pop brokers and you yourself went back to the drawing board and reworked your investment strategy.

First things first Infosys falling was like a little child rolling down from the top of a hill. At first his parents feel thrill then they smell fear and finally they run to check whether their kid is hurt or not.

The point being that if shares like Infosys can fall no amount of thumbs of rules can save you from the volatility of the market. A huge load of optimists will look at the share technically, some will look at it fundamentally and still mark it as a value buy. To all these blind men and women eventually the stock has tripped. Think of it as a miniature circuit breaker or MCB connected to your air conditioner and it’s tripped not one but twice now. A similar incident happened last year.

So what does this tell us?

Steer clear of the markets? Absolutely not. But it does give us an indication that even the maharajas can faulter. That fortunes can swindle from one extreme to the other. Everything that does go up will come down. And no matter how fundamentally strong and technically strong a stock may be and no matter how many buy ratings are put on a stock by the analysts a stock can fall.

Some people will now ask for a similar example. Refer to the monumental fall of Reliance where a head and shoulders pattern emerged wiping out investor wealth over a period of six to eight months.

The purpose behind writing this entire article is to focus on the need for diversification.

More on that in the future. 

On behalf of Doodle inc

(Udit Raj Sabharwal)

Lesson # 48 : The Company Men

Officially without any further debate I can state that The Company Men is the saddest, most depressing and bland film that I have watched in recent times. The reason and I don't blame the script writer or the director is that the entire film revolves around the Recession.

And perhaps the film is an actual portrayal of the trials and tribulations that an individual did need to go through when companies believed that the only key to survival was downsizing and job cuts.There's a lot that the film ends up teaching by the end of it. And though you are a lot sadder and depressed perhaps the lessons will serve a greater purpose in the scheme of things to come.

Without ruining the plot of the film some of the learnings are as follows:

1. So you worked at the corporation for 19 years. Good job. Now get lost.
2. It doesn't matter if you co-found a company or built it unless you run it.
3. All that really matters in the end are stock options and overvalued share pricing.
4. It's good to diversify specially if your core business makes losses one quarter after the other.
5. Even in a recession the best company is that which has the fanciest office. So fire employees if you can manage to get a new building out of it.
6. Sleeping with the head of HR doesn't guarantee that you will not be fired.
7. All said and done the Porsche or the Fancy Club membership ain't worth a dime if you can't pay your mortgage.
8. Losing your job will not cause the world to end.In short, we live, we die and the wheels on the bus go round and round.
9. There's always going to be neck to neck competition and it always pays if you don't have extra baggage along with you such as mortgages, credit card debt and heart disease.
10. Family is important. So treat them with respect. They are the only people who will stand by you when you land yourself in a pool of shit.

With that it would be a nice idea to go watch the film.

-On behalf of Doodle inc
(Udit Sabharwal)

Lesson # 47: Thinking Small Infinitely Small

There's a reason why most startups fail and it doesn't have to do with the economic crisis or over priced IPO's more often than not it's a bad idea and the traditional thought of thinking BIG.

So why is thinking BIG so bad for an individual, or a startup or a company?

Let's first understand the fundamental difference between thinking big and thinking long term.

Quite clearly thinking big is going to be different for every individual or company as it's completely relative. So for a 20 year old it's probably thinking about making a million dollars and retiring at the earliest whereas for a tech startup the idea is going to be about going on to launch their IPO and probably become the next Apple or Microsoft.

In contrast, thinking long term for the same individual is going to be about saving money every single day for the next few years so that ten years down the line he/she has those million dollars to retire. Similarly, for a startup it's going to be about developing sustainable products that will ensure that it will not run out of steam in roughly six to eight months and that probably in a few years time it is able to achieve that target of establishing itself as a successful company in comparison to both apple and microsoft.


The following having been defined perhaps it should be understood now that it is essential to think small and think Long.


There's a reason why an Apple product is perfect in every single sense. Right from the edges to the smooth transition between applications to the flawless touch sensitivity it offers. Similarly, there's a reason why each and every Lindt bar tastes the same, looks the same and is packed the same throughout the world. The beauty lies in each of these brands being able to think small.

Imagine a scenario where you say "I wanna be a millionaire". Brilliant, Perfect, What a thought. Now imagine leaving lose change in your pocket here and there. Or Imagine leaving about five rupees a day for say sixty years that amounts to 1,09,500. That's a whole lot of change and a whole lot of money you might never see. Or imagine buying full priced books when you can get them on heavy discounts on the internet. Do you still feel that it makes sense? What if on your death bed you realize you made exactly 98,90,500 and that you could have made a Crore had you not let go of all that loose change. The basic idea is to think small.

What if you buy an insurance policy and not read the fine print and suddenly when you need that money you curse yourself for not reading the finer print or as in this case thinking of the smaller things.

They say (And they are a bunch of idiots) that take care of the small things and the big things will fall into place. Perhaps it's the other way around.

On behalf of Doodle inc
(Udit Sabharwal)

Lesson # 46 : Why Puma can't make wallets and one business can't produce everything

I was gifted a Puma Wallet a few months ago and I stacked it away in my cupboard for about three months till my old wallet finally gave away and I had absolutely no choice but to actually go ahead and start making use of it. Upon searching online stores I realized that for a 550 rupee wallet it was an extremely shitty product.

The fundamental flaw with a Puma wallet is that you cannot store notes horizontally.You need to fold them and then role them up and stack them. Apart from this the wallet is so huge that it bulges right out of your pocket and for a frequent metro traveller like myself there's all the more reason to keep a lookout for pickpockets.

All this aside assuming I had bought the wallet which luckily I did not I would have probably discarded it within a span of one week which as it happens I am looking to do right about now.

So what does this little incident teach us?

Well firstly Puma cannot and should not manufacture wallets for one.Apart from this it is important to note that it is essential for businesses to look at a product and not simply go about producing it simply because it seems like a profitable venture but whether the product will have a significant impact on the market, whether the consumers will be willing to accept it and whether it will fit in with the brand image that has been generated over the course of time that the business has been in existence.

Considering all these factors lets take an example that goes in the opposite direction and then analyse the situation.

Amazon as an e-commerce store decides out of the blue that they want to get into the production of technological devices called ebook readers. That's a fantastic idea. And then they go all out and produce a flawless piece of hardware which sells out as fast as the iphone when it releases. That in itself is absolutely brilliant and in stark contrast to what Puma did.

But if tomorrow Amazon decides to produce everything electronics and let go of their fundamental business of e-commerce that is going to turn out to be absolutely unpleasant for them. So if you were relying on looking at Amazon televisions, mobile phones, music players, home theatre systems it is not an impossibility but the success of these ventures shall develop on the factors that I have stated above.

Finally, the entire purpose of writing this article was to point out that it is virtually impossible for a business to get into the production of anything and everything. No matter how big it is.

On behalf of Doodle
(Udit Sabharwal)

Lesson # 45 : Alma Mater ~ A Tale of Destiny?

I saw it in bookstores, painted across the web, on my facebook feed and even on other people's bookshelves. Personally there's a reason why you don't do something. In this case it was just procrastination.  So after roughly six months of contemplating whether I should spend 83 bucks on buying a book about an Indian Entrepreneur(Key words Indian and Entrepreneur used one after the other) I finally chose to go ahead and instead of buying two Twix bars and taking a rickshaw home I bought the book and walked down.

Now right on the first page Varun Aggarwal is pretty clear at stating that he ain't no author. And believe me when I say this he can't write for shit but the story that he tells is inspiring, witty and insightful. (He did not pay me to write this)

Any ways the whole idea is that when you read his story there's three things that the book delves into - Anu Aunty, Porn and well somewhere through mid way Alma mater.

Around the same time I also watched Matt Damon's we bought a Zoo and through the course of the entire movie there's one line I take back "Twenty Seconds of Courage"

I think that perhaps each one of us need to have those twenty seconds of courage. I am yet to have mine but I think Varun Aggarwal had his share of twenty seconds and co-founded a million dollar company. Was it destiny? I don't think so. If he would have been trying to wait for destiny come knocking on his door he would have been a part of the hundreds of engineers who work for an Infosys or a TCS.

So that's that every entrepreneur has a choice either to face up and gather his courage for those twenty seconds when he/she are faced with a choice. On one side is a cliff in which all of us eventually do fall the rat race which all of us try so hard to avoid and yet we end up right at the place which we choose to avoid and on the other end is a choice to run into a unforseen jungle one which hasn't been heard of or seen one which is meant for the brave hearted. If in those twenty seconds one can make that choice then perhaps life in itself can be completely different as it was Varun Aggarwal.

So was the book worth a read? (Considering I finished it in 2 hours.Yes)

Finally, gather your twenty seconds of courage and leap into the jungle of the unknown atleast that's what our Indian Entrepreneur thinks.

On behalf of Doodle 

(Udit Sabharwal)