Tag Archives: Fred Wilson

The Value of Writing (Blogs)..

Miscellaneous, Personal Development,

The last 3-4 weeks have been quite hectic with lot of travel. My work took me to the states of Maharashtra, Chhattisgarh, Delhi(Greater Noida), Maharashtra(again) and finally back in Tamil Nadu. During this period, I travelled by practically every mode of transport – aircrafts, train(AC/non-AC), bus, Auto-Rikshaw, cycle-rikshaw and what not(except boats). While the travel has been quiet fruitful, my blogging has been a casualty. As I sat to write this post, I realized that my last blog was almost a month ago. While I had convinced myself that the travel was the culprit, Fred Wilson’s blog said that real culprit might be lack of discipline. His view was in a different context,but he attributes a lot of his success to blogging. In his own words, “  I toiled in the VC business for close to twenty years before I hit my stride and the reason I found my stride was my adoption of blogging.

As all of you know, I write every day. It is my discipline, my practice, my thing. It forces me to think, articulate, and question. And I get feedback from it. When I hit publish, I get a rush. Every time. Just like the first time. It is incredibly powerful.

And it is permanent. There is a long and winding record of my thinking out there on the public Internet.”

Now, in addition to Seth Godin, there is one more guy who makes a convincing case for writing blogs daily. And as Fred says, the rush one gets when publishing a blog is something not to be missed. As I am about to hit the publish button, I am getting that rush!!!!

Steve Jobs and “Focus”

Business, Leadership, Literature, ,

Who was the most iconic CEO of the last decade? Very few people will disagree with the choice of Steve Jobs. No wonder there are so many books about Steve Jobs and the Apple story. While many of the books are interesting, the most read book is likely to be “Steve Jobs”by Walter Isaacson. The book is about 600 pages thick and naturally, it would be quite comprehensive and would cover most important aspects of his life(I haven’t read it yet).I am sure the book is also the favorite of many of his admirers, fans and probably even critics.

While there are so many things that can be learned from Jobs, one of the most legendary aspects of his life has been his razor like focus. In his popular daily blog, Fred Wilson(a Venture Capitalist and principal of Union Square Ventures), writes about this aspect “Focus”. He says that “Focus is critical when you are three people, when you are twenty-five people, five hundred people, and ten thousand people. You can always get farther faster by saying no to too many projects and too many priorities. Pick your shots carefully and hit them. That’s what Jobs did to turn around Apple and that’s what you can do with your company too.” The full blog can be read here.

As an entrepreneur myself, I have been trying to apply this principle of “focus”. At our company, we have been focusing on only one vertical and that has served us quite well so far, especially we are so much resource constrained. And “focus”is required not only in new firms, but also in every aspect of life. Do you agree?