Aditya Kothadiya's Blog

Targeted Audience: Entrepreneurs, and Recent Graduates.

The common challenges for every young professional, who wants to be an entrepreneur at one fine day, are –   

• How do I start while working for some other company? 
• How long shall I wait for “the idea”?
• How do I get that “the idea”?
• Now I have an idea, but don’t have money. How do I implement it?

I assume that you are working full time with some big corporation for your primary day job. The biggest advantage that you have while working with these big companies is access to more time. And another biggest plus point is, you don’t have to worry too much about paying your bills. 

Yes, any entrepreneur’s dream is to start something which is truly remarkable and innovative and which will change the world. But how long we should wait for that “the remarkable” and “the innovative” idea? 

My mentor, Rajesh Setty advised me that -   

It’s not the coolest idea that you should wait for, it is the coolest execution that you should focus on!

I strongly believe that we being young professionals, can stretch ourselves after our day time job. We should leverage these “more time and more energy” aspects to its fullest. We should get started with implementing some not-so-remarkable idea in our available part time and start getting our hands dirty. It can be a very common idea or a trivial problem or some small project. 

If you have time, if someone is paying your bills, and if you have a passion to start, then I don’t understand what it is which is stopping you from getting started? Ideas are very easy to imagine and talk, but are equally challenging to implement and build. The crux is that we need to get started with something ASAP, if not in full time, but at least in part-time.   

The most important part of work is the beginning. — Plato

The purpose behind this part-time activity is to learn the execution process, understand the team spirit and bonding with our co-founders and feel the heat of implementation challenges. The cool ideas will evolve along the execution phase once we are in the battle ground. Once we start working on some details, contact more customers, learn from advisors, and discuss with industry veterans, the ideas will evolve.

Part time activity is nothing but a reality check to understand that whether can we really implement something and make it working in the real world. Once we can develop this one product or project successfully, we can confidently count on us for solving that next big thing and critical problem. 

Now you might still question that where do I get that common idea or a trivial problem. Or how do I even start in the part time. We can always do some free lancing work, or do some consulting work. Or we can develop some contacts with startup founders who generally have some small projects that they want someone to implement for them in low cost. So finding a problem may not be challenge, but implementing it, surely is. So let’s start executing it ASAP, coolly!

To read more lessons from my mentors, please visit Lessons from Mentor.

Targeted Audience: Entrepreneurs, Students, Recent Graduates

Background: Renowned leadership expert and author John C. Maxwell describes how anyone can improve his or her relationship skills with 25 principles in his book Winning With People.

I plan to cover each of his principle in this series.

Please read more principles here: Winning With People

John Maxwell’s “The Mirror Principle”

People unaware of who they are and what they do often damage relationships with others. The way to change that is to look in the mirror. Consider these truths that we must learn about ourselves:

Self-Awareness
Human nature seems to endow people with the ability to size up everybody in the world but themselves.

Self-Image
Your image of yourself restricts your ability to build healthy relationships. A negative self-image will keep a person from being successful. If those with a poor self-image do somehow achieve success, it won’t last because they will eventually bring themselves down to the level of their own expectations.

Self-Honesty
Comedian Jack Parr quipped, “Looking back, my life seems like one big obstacle race, with me being the chief obstacle.” What can save us is a willingness to get honest about our shortcomings, faults and problems.

Self-Improvement
Critic Samuel Johnson advised that “he who has so little knowledge of human nature as to seek happiness by changing anything but his own disposition will waste his life in fruitless efforts and multiply the grief which he purposes to remove.”

Self-Responsibility
No significant accomplishments can be achieved by individual effort. However, every significant accomplishment begins with the vision of one individual. Once we possess the vision, we must take responsibility for carrying it to others.

Wow! What a terrific insight! Though this principle is about winning with people, it teaches us not to focus on the “people” aspect, but first start focusing on the “me” aspect. Once we develop our positive image, and are honest in identifying our short comings, then we need to focus on overcoming those shortcomings. After we do some progress on the self-improvement front, we should take a responsibility to lead. 

Once we are sure that who we are, what we have, and what we want to achieve, its less probable that others will be confused about ourselves. And when they are not confused, I don’t see any reason that they will not help us in achieving our dreams. And that’s how you win with people.

To read more principles from this series, please visit: Winning With People

#1. The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn. –Alvin Toffler

#2. It is optional to become confident because you are successful, but it is mandatory to be confident to become successful. –- Aditya Kothadiya

#3. Do not try to teach a pig to sing — it wastes your time and annoys the pig. — Donald Cliffton

#4. There is no security on this earth; there is only opportunity. — General Douglas MacArthur

#5. The greatest danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but that is too low and we reach it.  — Michelangelo

For more quotes, please visit, Inspiring Quotes.

Do not compromise on your field of interest

Targeted Audience: Students

Compromising on your area of interest for funding opportunity in some other area is very common situation I have seen amongst the students. Yes, funding is critical but there are always some ways to manage this worry. I shall cover how to handle financial worries at later part of this series. But in this discussion, I want to emphasize the importance of your area of interest.

It is very important to understand that postgraduate studies are easy to complete if you want to achieve just 3.0 GPA and get the degree, but it takes tremendous efforts if you want to excel and aim for more than 3.8 GPA. When it requires tremendous hardwork from you, then your interest is the only incredibly compelling emotion that enables you to slog hard, to push and stretch your limits and to perform high. It is hard to reproduce similar kind of passion for other subjects, which are not of your interests. Even if you are funded in some non-specific areas, it becomes difficult to excel in those subjects.

I know few of my genius friends, to whom I still admire the most, who have done these kinds of mistakes. They compromised on their area of interest, and finally landed into some other job profile. Now they don’t seem to be passionate enough about their technology, about their job life and also about their ambitions. It’s like having no passion in what you do is a small bug. Once it enters into our body system, slowly and steadily, it damages the whole body system.

On the same note, we need to understand that the change is inevitable. Your interests are going to change along the period. Be flexible, be open, and keep following your passion. Do not restrict yourself to one set of mind. Being open will help you to acquire what is new and in demand. That kind of outlook will help you to always do what is required in the industry and always be in the hot position.

Getting reward isn’t about making only right choice; it’s about practicing that choice consistently. — Aditya Kothadiya

When I decided to pursue my MS, I observed that all my seniors were going for Biomedical Instrumentation specialization. I also thought that Biomedical Instrumentation is going to be the next big thing, so I should also pursue my MS in Biomedical only. But then while working in the industry, I realized that I have more passion for hardware and software integration. So I decided to go for Embedded Systems. After I came to USC for Embedded Systems program, I learned that the department did not offer the courses in Embedded Systems. The respective professors were busy in their research projects such that they had to cancel those courses. By that time, I had taken some courses in Digital Design area, and realized that I am more interested into Architecture and Digital Design field. And finally I decided to work in VLSI Digital Design domain, and I am truly enjoying my work as I landed into my interest.

For more articles from this series, please visit – Beyond Intelligence

Targeted Audience: Entrepreneurs

For young and not much experienced founders, this would be a
critical question – how much we should remunerate to our co-founders and
ourselves. Especially in the Bay Area, if you have around 4-5 years of experience,
then it is most likely that you will be earning a six-figure salary. And if you
are carrying an entrepreneurial passion, then it is most likely that you will
jump into your startup venture after 4-5 years of experience. So when you
decide to switch to your startup activity for full time, you must be already
earning a six-figure salary.

Now the question is, how much salary you define to yourself
when you are working for your own startup? Do you take the same six-figure
salary of your previous employer or you settle down for small amount, which
serves your basic minimum requirements? 

We young founders assume that it is obvious that we will get
the similar six-figure salary, as we are CEO and CTO of our company. Its hard
to digest the fact that even after being a CEO and CTO, we may have to take probably
the lowest salary in the company. 

I interacted with few successful entrepreneurs and advisors,
and they guided me on this front quite brilliantly. 

1. Account other factors: Your previous salary and your current position in your startup are not the only measures to define your salary. You need to take care of other pre-requisites such as your financial needs (student loans or car loans), cash situation of your startup (self-funded or external investment), culture you want to establish in your startup (frugal and practical or luxurious and stylish) and few more.
2. Think deferring your payment: If the cash situation is tight in your company, irrespective of it is self-funded or externally funded, in early days you might consider deferring the payment of founders. One of our advisors mentioned that when he started his first company, he and his co-founder did not draw a single penny for the first six months and they deferred their payment for that period. They wanted to first focus on hiring good people to develop their product.
   1. One thing, which is required in this scenario, is you have a supportive family and there is no financial responsibility on your shoulder from your family.
   2. If you are ready to defer your payment and take a risk, and your co-founder is not, then you may offset this difference by equity share and stock option benefits.
   3. You can keep the deferment period flexible, like till you get the first customer commitment or so.
3. Be ready to take the risk: When we are seeking external funding, one of the major expenses we show to
   investors is – compensation. We tend to take close to six-figure salary for founders and want to play a safe bet. My mentor gave me best insight on this – its like we are acting as an employee of our company and not as a founder. We are not willing to take that risk and want to make sure that at least we get our salary irrespective of company becomes successful or not. And if we, founders, are not willing to take that much risk in our company, then how could an investor would take a risk by investing in our company.
4. Understand the power of equity: We need to understand the potential of wealth creation through the equity ownership. Equity and stock options should motivate your co-founders and employees such that they take personal interest in your business. And for that interest, they put maximum hardwork to achieve success for them and for you. 

Well, I may be wrong in this approach, but when I was
calculating our salary structure, I understood the paradigms of each of co-founders.
For me, I knew that I am responsible for my family financial requirements so I
cannot defer the payment. So I came up with a figure which includes – basic
minimum annual expense requirements plus very little positive margin but no
savings margin. And that’s how I decided my salary. And it is quite below than the
salaries my peer colleagues are earning in big companies. But it’s “being the
founder of my own company” vs “being employee of someone else’s company” that
is making the difference much more positive on my side. 

If you are a founder of a company, would you please discuss
how did you decide the salary for you and your co-founders? Some generic rules
will be very helpful for other entrepreneurial readers to know the art behind
this tricky process.

I am very happy to know that Adeologue is featured on TypePad home page today.

Heartiest welcome to all TypePad readers.

To guide you well on this blog, I write for students, recent graduates and would be young entrepreneurs based on my own experiences during my school days and entrepreneurial ventures.

Quick guide:

1. For Students, to score and soar high, you might be interested in reading posts from following categories:
Theory to Practice
Tips for Students
Beyond Intelligence

2. For Recent Graduates, it will help you to excel in your professional career to read articles from:
Theory to Practice
Beyond Intelligence

3. For would be Young Entrepreneurs, these articles will surely help you to achieve your dreams:
Entrepreneurship
What Makes Them Entrepreneurial?
Startup and Entrepreneurship Resources

4. For all, do not forget to check out some interesting posts from
One Page Book Reviews
Five Inspiring Quotes
Five Funny Quotes

I hope you enjoyed my writing. The main reason I write this blog is to change the world and I hope I am giving highest return on investment for your time. Stay tuned to this blog, more interesting and compelling writings are in pipeline.

You have a super day ahead!

Targeted Audience: Entrepreneurs, Students, Recent Graduates

Being a young and ambitious entrepreneur, I am a strong believer that we should start a startup as early as possible. I have already written about the ASAP Implementation approach. I also mentioned the advantages of starting a startup at young age.

But I do face lot of challenges as well. So being a devil’s advocate, I am just trying to look at the same objective, i.e. to start a startup at early stage, from a different perspective.

What are the challenges that young entrepreneurs may have to face?

Not mature and experienced enough
When we are just graduated fresh out of school, and are not exposed to real world challenges, then while solving the problems, our approach to these problems is not based on industry standard. We still think small. We think that startup projects are next versions of school projects. But we need to understand that  its not just next version. Building a product is huge and complex task, but building a company is something which we never learn at school. Startup is not just about one remarkable product. It is about a growing company. And defining a vision to grow your startup is a challenge. Also, school projects are practice problems, but the startup problems are real. The intensity of these problems is very different. Work experience matters a lot because it gives you an understanding that how difficult and complex the real world problems are and what type of intricacy level you need work to solve that problem.

But the good news is that there are some ways, through which, we can overcome this lack of exposure to real world experiences. There are lot of experienced people out there who are happy to help us out, so leveraging from their experience can be a key to overcome our startup in early age issue.

Definitely, getting help and channelizing it an appropriate direction is a challenge, but its surely not a showstopper if we plan things well ahead of time and work on it consciously.

The Time management dilemma – School Vs Startup
When we are students, most of the time is spent in studying academic
courses. Similarly, when we are recent graduates, we are busy in
proving our excellence to our new boss. So we spend very little time in
building product prototype, understanding the market trends, learning
business aspects, knowing the financial terms, building the
relationships and networking. So we have less preparation time before
we enter into this entrepreneurial world.

Of course, having lot of preparation time is not a requisite step to
enter into an entrepreneurial world. Many entrepreneurs learn most of
these things on the fly on an incremental basis with the help of right
mentors. But it is always an added advantage if we at least know the
theory behind entrepreneurship. But if we plan some of the important
things well ahead of time, I think these failures can be mitigated.

Does Money matter? Of course Yes!
In today’s world, even if the cost involved in starting a startup has reduced dramatically, it is not free. Starting a part time activity is manageable, but if we want to start a real entity, then it involves the money game. We need to raise money to bootstrap our company, especially when we are just graduated from the school. When we are working for other company, we can save some money, which can be used at least to bootstrap our idea.

Again, there are ways to raise the money, but as we are kids in this entrepreneur world, we have very less credibility in the market. So it is little hard to raise the money even if investors are ready to invest in our idea. If someone is coming up with same idea but with experienced management team, I guess they will go for other team.

One thing we can do is, do some savings when we are young, such that, that money is enough to get the prototype of our idea running. Once we have running prototype, then we can focus on raising more money.

Having said all, I accept that there are lot of problems. But I also believe that there are solutions and more importantly, there are solution providers. For me, the bottom line still remains the same – start ASAP.

Targeted Audience: Entrepreneurs, Students, Recent Graduates

Background: Renowned leadership expert and author John C. Maxwell describes how anyone can improve his or her relationship skills with 25 principles in his book Winning With People.

I plan to cover each of his principle in this series.

We all know that good relationships are the foundation for almost all achievements. Relationships are more than just the icing on the cake in life: They are the cake — the very substance we need to live successful and fulfilling lives. Many people fall into the trap of taking relationships for granted. That’s not good because our ability to build and maintain healthy relationships is the single most important factor in how we get along in every area of life.

Not everyone has the skills to initiate, build and sustain good, healthy relationships. Some people are so focused on themselves and their needs that others might as well not even exist. It takes relationally healthy people to build great relationships.

John Maxwell’s "The Lens Principle"

Who you are determines what you see and the way you see it. What is around us doesn’t  determine what we see: What is within us does. And who you are determines how you see others. If you are a trusting person, you will see others as trustworthy. If you are a critical person, you will see others as critical. If you are a caring person, you will see others as compassionate. The way you view others is determined by who you are. If you don’t like people, that really is a statement about you and the way you look at people. Your viewpoint is the problem. If that’s the case, don’t try to change others. Don’t even focus on others; focus on yourself. If you change yourself and become the kind of person you desire to be, you will begin to view others in a whole new light. And that will change the way you interact in all of your relationships.

I learned a lot about this principle from some of my very close friends. They are VERY GOOD at building new relationships. And they are BEST at caring for those relationships. And thats the reason they are one of the most likeable people in our friends’ circle – and successful too.

Learn to say “NO”

Targeted audience: Students

This is hard and tricky part. But learn to say NO when it is required to say NO. Let’s consider a situation, where you and your friend were assigned homework and its due in next 2 days. Assume that you just started working on that assignment as its still 2 days before the due date. But your friend completes that assignment, comes to you and asks for a movie. 

Now what will you do? Will you accept his invitation for movie or will you complete your assignment? 

It’s a tough situation to take a call for two reasons – 

1. You also want to watch that movie
2. And he is your friend and you don’t want to disappoint him by saying NO.

In such situations, you need to apply the rule of laser beam – staying focused! You need to first analyze your work load, analyze its priority, and analyze your expertise level to complete that work load. Based on these parameters, you should take the decision whether to accept friend’s proposal or stick to your assignment completion plan. Your friend, who is inviting you for a movie, can complete that assignment in 1 day. But it is not necessary that you can also complete the same assignment in 1 day. Learn to say “NO” if you have some priority work to complete before you accept any invitation.

Stay focused like a laser beam.

For more articles from this series, please visit – Beyond Intelligence

Targeted Audience: Entrepreneurs, Recent Graduates

In my recent visit with one of our advisors, I learnt this simple and powerful mantra for technology oriented companies – “Do the common thing uncommonly well!”

In my previous post, I had already explained that for technology startups, positioning themselves in the "new product & existing market" domain is one of the vital steps towards startup success. I have been struggling a lot on these aspects, and that made me to think, how do we win in the existing market. As there are already known and big players who are penetrated well in that market, then where is the scope for startups.

I think, the idea behind "new product" in the "existing market" is not that we need to come up with the breakthrough technology. It is about filling the innovations in the existing products. And thats where doing common things uncommonly well comes into a picture. I had also written a post on value innovation approach of entrepreneurs.

We engineers, generally are product focused. Our business model is based on technology advantages. Its like our startups are pushing technologies on to the market.

On the other hand, we can enter into a segment where there is a pull from the market. After entering at commodity level of an existing but growing market, we can distinguish ourselves by innovations, exceptional services, and cost factors.

Of course, there are many more factors to decide the positioning aspect, but unless you are a PhD with a breakthrough research idea, or have a solid work experience under your belt, it is hard to play with the technology push approach. It should be safer to start with the market pull approach, and then eventually emerge as a technology push winner.

I hope this approach to scrutinize your idea will help you to position yourself better in the market so that you make it a successful startup.

Your network is your net worth!

Targeted Audience: Students

Networking is always useful in any walk of your life. Finding opportunities, converting those opportunities into actions, and accumulating these actions for the ultimate success – all these things cannot be achieved single handedly. My mentor, Rajesh Setty always taught this to me –

What we know is important. But, who we know is more important than what we know. What is also important is how we know who we know.

During our academic life, when we are away from our parents, our friends and our seniors are our new family members.

These new roommates and friends play a vital role in our academic success by staying with us in both good and bad times. It is very crucial to get nice roommates. And that’s where our network of old friends and seniors come into picture.

Instead of trying to figure out things for ourselves by ourselves, we need to leverage our network to provide right opportunities for us at the right time. Seniors guide us in selecting relevant courses based on their experiences and industry requirements.

They inform us about the potential vacancies for RA or TA positions when they are graduating and leaving those positions.

When they are working in corporate world, they help us in forwarding our resume in their companies and guiding us for interview preparations. And referrals work much better than any job application process. It is like half the battle won.

They provide us their used materials like photocopies, books, notes, which help us to save a lot money.

The advantages of leveraging from your network thus goes on and on. But it’s not always about taking. It rather first starts with giving. We need to invest time to give without expecting a return for some time. These relationships do not happen as it is. They have to be carefully constructed and then maintained. Every relationship takes considerable amount of our time and we should consider that time as an investment towards building that relationship.

We may not see the benefits and rewards of these investments immediately, but in long run we will see the time invested in building these powerful networks getting to its fruition.

For more articles from this series, please visit – Beyond Intelligence
 

#1. If I ever finish a speech, and I can still standup, then that was a lousy speech. — Tom Peters

#2. To lead men you have got to lead them with affection. — JRD Tata

#3. Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed citizens can change a nation; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has. — Dr. Margaret Mead

#4. Respect your efforts, respect yourself.  Self-respect leads to self-discipline.  When you have both firmly under your belt, that’s real power. — Clint Eastwood

#5. Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off the goal. — Henry Ford

For more quotes, please visit, Inspiring Quotes.

Targeted Audience: Entrepreneurs, Recent Graduates, Students

We know that a sharp saw cuts trees far better than a blunt one. So for higher yield, we sharpen our saw once. Then we start cutting the trees. And we observe that we are able to cut more trees than we used to do before. So we keep cutting more trees. And we become so busy in cutting those trees such that we do not realize that by this time, our saw again became a blunt one.

Same is the case with our career. After talking with many friends, I realized that people sharpen their skills once, and based on that, they get good opportunities in their career. But then they settle down for that same opportunity for years. They think that they are still cutting large number of woods.

I think the time has changed now. We need to step back for few moments from our busy schedule to do some introspection. It may be high time to re-sharpen our saw. If we have sharpened ourselves with one particular technology skill, then it is time to sharpen ourselves with another technology skill or with some management skill.

The point here is not to look for another opportunity. The point is to look for another skill – either professional or personal. We can not stop learning process. It will be a sin. We have to remember that there are no speed limits on the road to excellence. So we have to speed up, we have to shift the gear. And shifting gear will happen smoothly when we re-sharpen our saw on frequent basis.

Happy full-throttle driving ahead!

Targeted Audience: Entrepreneurs

Background: I read a lot. And I try to read as much quality stuff as possible.
Many times I stumble upon very compelling and thoughtful writings. I
learn a lot from those writings, but some of you may miss those
articles in this era of information overload. And I don’t want someone
to miss those compelling articles. 

Henceforth, whenever I stumble upon any compelling reading on
Startup or on Entrepreneurship, I will link those resources in my blog.

Today’s must read articles for any would be young entrepreneur:

Guy Kawasaki: How to Get the Attention of a Venture Capitalist

John Nesheim: The Rule of 2

To read more articles from this series, please visit Startup and Entrepreneurship Resources.

Targeted Audience: Entrepreneurs

I being an engineer always thought that starting a startup
is all about designing and implementing some application. Now I understand that
the reality is quite different. Technology is critical aspect of any startup,
but strategies, decision making, business planning, resource management,
financial management are probably most vital aspects of any
startup. If these things are not in place, then it might be hard for technology alone to find its way.

I thought I would be spending more than 90% efforts on
technology aspect, but I realized that I can’t. On the same line, I found
interesting statistics on allocation of efforts for technology startups by
engineering founders during their first six months of business. The allocation
goes as below:

• Engineering – 31%
• Sales/Marketing – 28%
• Manufacturing – 25%
• Finance/Administration – 16% 

The point here is not that you allocate your efforts
according to above figures when you are working for your startup. The point is
that, you may come from engineering background, but you may not always spend
your time doing what you thought you would be doing. You need to take care of
many other aspects for which you were not prepared earlier.