How To Create Magic

In my book, building, growing and motivating a team is among the hardest of all human pursuits. But if you're an entrepreneur this art has to be mastered. If you fall prey to the traditional entrepreneur mindset of "only I can do it properly," I've got some advice for you: snap out of it!

Teams aren't just important because it's the first pretty much the only thing investors look at in a prospect. They aren't just important because every entrepreneur needs others to share the load. What makes teams an essential part of any entrepreneur's success is that even a mildly-cohesive team can often generate magic.

I have interacted with many entrepreneurs in various stages of the startup life-cycle - from boom to bust and any everything in between - and those that are more successful often credit their achievements to not being the smartest in the room. This is sometimes a difficult concept for the stubborn, alpha types - who are traditionally thought to be hard-headed enough to achieve the impossible of building something from nothing - to fathom, but it is close to the single most important characteristic to consider when choosing team members.

Think about it: the sheer audacity to believe that you can build a tiny little company into a world-beater demands a requisite level of craziness from the founding team. It also needs an abundance of balls, tenacity, luck and everything, and then some, to go in your favour.

Unless you get funded (and the chances of that happening are slimmer than the width of a hair, see Entrepreneur's infographic below) you will need to build your product or offer using highly skilled team members, who you probably won't be able to afford. You'll also need significant sales, marketing and street smarts. You may possess a few of these traits, but there isn't a single person alive who is a God of all traits. I hear you asking, "so who do I do it?" With a good team, is the answer.

Emotion & Failure

Don't believe the naysayers, creating a team characterised by cohesion and drive WILL help you build that bridge to success. Team members need to possess a myriad of skills, not least of which include a truckload of emotional intelligence and the individual ability to handle constructive criticism and failure.

Why failure? Because building something from scratch requires everyone concerned to deal with and learn from many less-than-perfect results. The process of actually accomplishing this learn-repeat-rinse process is far from easy. From personal experience, it creates many potential points of implosion between team members who may otherwise enjoy great rapport with each other.

The increase in dopamine that results from difficult situations is usually not well handled by most people, particularly the "worriers" among us. Therefore, it's even more important for every team member to completely buy into the assumption that everyone is aiming toward the same goal, despite differing views on how to achieve it, and to collectively reinforce this regularly.  Only then will handling and dealing with failure become easier, to a point where it starts acting as a real motivator and binding force for the wider team.

The Fairer Sex

The question of gender is also an interesting one. I have personally seen in my teams that gender diversity can help bring about a greater degree of emotion modulation, diversity of thought and engagement that may be a real competitive advantage in a largely male-dominated field.

The other reason gender equality is important in founding teams is eloquently explained in the book "Top Dog" by Po Bronson. He explains that the difference between men and women is not so much about Mars and Venus, but about the fact that women are far better surveyors of risk. In the startup world where risk-taking is the name of the game, this ability to better appreciate risk is an even greater asset.

Contrary to popular belief, every unicorn that you hear about wasn't an overnight success. It took each of those companies many wrong turns and dead ends to create the reputations they now enjoy. These unicorns obviously had visionary and instinctive leaders. But the question that begs is, how much smoother could the the paths to success of these companies have been if they had greater risk assessment ability as part of their founding and management teams?

The Small Matter of Investors

Investors talk a lot of shit about team and how it is their first consideration. What they don't tell you is that it is literally their ONLY consideration. All this talk of business models, revenue streams, J-curves and the like is ancillary to biggest question in investors' heads: will this team create magic?

Have you ever wondered why even the worst performing businesses start churning out great results after the management team is overhauled? Why is it that senior executive movements create yoyos out of stock price charts? Companies, no matter their size, aren't incorporated great, they are made great by talented and cohesive teams.

It pays to not always be the smartest in the room. The question is, can you build and grow with a team where you will also have to let others make decisions and shine?

Entrepreneurship 101: Entrepreneurship and the Internet

The most common question asked of me, usually at social gatherings where genuine banter is in short supply (usually because prohibition has been declared for the duration of the event) and in order to break an awkward silence, so what is your one tip for new entrepreneurs?

Just as there are no silver bullets, or unicorns for that matter, there is no one tip to end all tips that will help an entrepreneur an "overnight success." From my point of view, the fault is not in the question, but the perception that there is a formula or a sure-shot path to success. A perception pedalled particularly to gullible millenials, who globally appear to be struggling with the concept that one must actually work and solve real problems with real solutions, in order to be successful.

Back to the question: while nobody is successful just because their parents taught them as kids that they could be anything they wanted, there is one thing that I've learned not to do:

Don't believe everything you read on the internet.

Now, I can almost guarantee you're sitting there going, who the fuck doesn't know this? But think about it, whenever you come across a problem, where do you go? Exactly.

This problem is compounded by the fact that in times of uncertainty, it is human nature to lower our defences and objectivity. It's published on the internet, how can it not be true? Right?

Our ancestors probably turned to astrologers and sages to seek their wisdom. Our parents used to turn to textbooks or their parents when looking for answers. We inherently turn to random people we've never met, who may or may not know what they're writing about, but still manage to dupe us into believing them. At least our ancestors and parents weren't getting their information from faceless men of the Labor party.

Asking Uncle Google for help on how to succeed as an entrepreneur is as futile as assuming the entrepreneurship class at university will teach you all you need to know. Trust me, I've done my fair share of said classes back in the day. I look back at them now and think, WTF was I thinking? How could an academic who has never run a business in his life teach me about how to hire a great team or to teach the team to lock the door on that one night where I'm not the last to leave or even about how to get my first customer? How?

(I apologise to the academics in my family. I wasn't referring to you, only some of your friends who haven't spent a day in the real world.)

In my book, the only thing worse than asking Google for the silver bullet is accepting the advice of the know-it-all that we all have in our lives. The same person who thinks they could actually teach entrepreneurship at university and would've also built Uber 15 years ago, but couldn't because...you know...the government got in the way and their parents forced them to get married and smartphones didn't exist, yaar.

So back to the question again: the only way to learn how to enjoy any success as an entrepreneur is to talk to real people who are or were on a similar journey, face-to-face. To build or be part of a team and networks you can turn to when ideas need a wall to bounce off. To experiment with your options in real-life situations after you've performed the best possible analysis. To trust your gut because every successful business was born out of instinct, and only later was structure added to make the said business successful and repeatable.

The internet is great for making money. Just not for learning how to do it. No?

How NOT To Incriminate Yourself After Getting Fired 101

Don't write an email like this to your boss:

from:		Darius Dari <d********32@gmail.com>
to:		<<removed>>
date:		Sat, Jun 13, 2015 at 1:16 AM
subject:		Re: Cessation of Employment Documents

Hi Ayush 

I had like to inform you as you provided the documents with your sincerity, that meant you are afraid on me that i will do something and also wanted to remind you that I have taken all your customer data's and trust me you will face lot of consequence toward me... 

I  do not want to leave you just like that you need to know the power of a bangalore localite  

And Ms Vandhana is your mediator, one day she is going to jazz you out Mr Trivedi......with all my clients.....

Just watch out...........

Regards
Darius Das..

Anyone now looking to employ Mr Das? If you are, be aware of his "power" (including those that stretch to his English writing skills), for you are likely to end up a victim of theft and may just be left jazzed out with all his "clients". 

NB. I'll be more than happy to provide a reference for this bloke if you're still thinking of hiring him.

What's Your Favourite Number?

Gotta love choices in life:

Lost in Translation

I never thought language would be much of a problem here in India.  Even though I can't speak or understand any of the South Indian languages most people in Bangalore can speak either Hindi or English, so we had a pretty good chance of being able to communicate.  However every place has their colloquial sayings,  you see it from state to state in Australia.  So we have found quite often with a combination of slang, words that just don't mean what we were taught and the heavy Indian accent, we often find ourselves lost in translation.

In the beginning, before we got our car we borrowed a car with a driver and needed to go somewhere, around 40 minutes away.  We ask the driver how long it would take to get to Ulsoor.  He said Ulsoor is very far and seemed hesitant to take us. However with Bangalore traffic even 10 kms can take an hour and well people are always hesitant to do anything at first.

We rely on Google maps like oxygen (It is seriously phenomenal here in India).  However the driver said the directions we were giving him are wrong, and who were we to argue with some who has lived in this city his whole life. Some point during the traffic as the sun hit my face, I fell asleep and woke up while we at the toll booth.  I found it strange that we had to pay a toll and it was about double what we usually pay.
We try to find the exact place but was noone knew where it was.  We decided to call the guy we were meeting but as we look at our phones and neither of us have signal.  My phone not having signal was nothing new, however my husbands? That was strange, we turned our phones on and off whatever we could but it was no use.  We borrowed the drivers phone and tried to get to the place we were meant to do, after about a half an hour of driving around, numerous phone calls we decided to call it quits, we had no google maps and the driver had no idea where to go.  Turns out we had crossed the border, entered Tamil Nadu as there is also a town called Ulsoor.  We supposedly pronounced it wrong and ended up in another state.  As for vodafone (Another post in itself), thought it would be perfect timing to cut our phones off.  So note to self, before you end up in a different state, just use Google maps.

However despite this, I think phone calls have to be the hardest to decipher.  I have noticed here in Bangalore people have a habit of speaking ridiculously fast and adding sounds of "aaa, and ennaa" to the end of most words.  Now I have been accused of speaking as fast as a cast member of the Gilmore girls when I talk to my friends, this is just on a whole different level. Trying to decipher a sentence spoken in fast forward and with random sounds in the middle makes in an act in the comedy festival.
I had a conversation where about 7 minutes were spent on me understanding pmntlenaaa.
Lady on the phone: So yur hr pmnentlenaaa
Me: huh
Lady on the phone: So yur hr pmnentlenaaa
Me:....I'm sorry, could you repeat that
Lady on the phone: So yur hr pmnentlenaaa
Me......What?
About 3 more times I think she is asking if I stay here permanently now
Me: Permanently?
Lady on the phone: Pmnentlenaaa
It was only once I looked over and see my husband in hysterics telling me to just say yes, I realised that great we have been saying the same thing. Often it gets to a point of frustration where I just hand the phone over to my husband.  Although many times as soon as I handed it to him and he said the words "Hindi or English" I realised I had been speaking in English while the person on the other end was speaking in Kannada.

Having a maid that speaks no Hindi and very very little English has proven to have its difficulties.  I have tried to use all the years of playing charades to use. To be honest I think it does more damage than good and in her eyes I'm just making odd actions. So our communication is a combination of my mediocre acting, the use of single words to describe things and a lot of blank stares between the two of us while my husband chortles away.  I honestly could speak in minion language and have her understand just as much as she does now. Actually according to her I do speak in minion language since I'm always singing this around the house.

Issues I have had recently are the pronunciation on tomato vs toe-mo-too, ok so when you read it it just looks like a typo- trust me I spent about 5 minutes trying to decipher what she was saying and concluding that yes we were both talking about tomatoes. Or asking for Milk and being asked if I mean Milakenaa and yes she is saying that in English.  

Or the best so far, me asking the maid to buy some mushrooms from the grocer. Her giving me blank looks. Me trying to act out mushrooms and explaining that she's chopped them up for us numerous times. And my maid coming back from the grocer with this:

I clearly do not have an acting career in the future.  

I'm sure the list will grow, but here are a few words that I have struggled with, and what they actually mean:

In Bangalore                               English

Cover                                            Plastic Bag

Aaa/ enaaa                                    Punctuation: ./,/?
Frayil                                             Fragile
Milakennaaa                                  Milk
Plitoo                                            Plateau
Peeordee                                      Plastic pouch
PFA                                             Please find Attached
CCD                                            Cafe Coffee Day

Congratulations and Celebrations!

I admit I have very little experience with buying cars.  The last time I needed to, I walked into some dealerships, and my Dad handled the rest (yup Daddy's princess, can’t deny it)

Buying a car in India is a little different.  We needed a car, honestly just something that would get us from A to B in one piece (major plus point). Since my husband totally negates my negative IQ about cars, I thought I’d take the back seat on this one ;).  The first three dealerships we went to, would take over 4 months to get us a car…4 months? Not just their dealership but all the dealerships by that company would have a 4 month wait.  Surely something is going wrong with their efficiency model there.  

So in our 4^th dealership, we were a bit more experienced and began with asking about their wait time

“10 days Sir, promise, 10 days latest”

Ok, we can deal with that.   Mistake #1: believing them.  With true Indian style we were offered coffee or tea, which in comparison to the last dealerships where they never delivered on their promised coffee, we were already impressed. My husband scrutinized at the tyres, the steering wheel and whatever else you look at in a car while I sat there sipping my sugar with a dash of coffee.

So we thought we were after a basic car.  However a basic car here means a car without AC, no air bags and no ABS brakes….so it’s pretty much an Auto (tuk tuk) with doors.  So we decide to go for something a little more ‘high end’.  The salesman’s false promise of “10 days latest” turned into 3 weeks or more.  So after some days of yelling and threatening, we basically get given someone else's car.  Now usually I wouldn't be OK with this, but they gave our car away to someone else, who most probably threatened and screamed, so why go against the system.  I am positive I could find a more quiet efficient solution to this.

So whenever you buy a car or purchase a high monetary value item in India you have to go get it blessed.  Back in Australia we used to go to the temple on the closest weekend after buying a car, the priest would come outside bless us and the car and that was that.  That’s not how it’s done in South India.  So you walk into a dealership and there is usually some sort of open fire taking place in front of heaps of cars. I’m sure it’s totally safe.  With an in-house priest, That’s right all the major dealerships have their own priest, so you can’t drive away without having this ritual done. I guess that’s one thing that works in their efficiency model.

We get told to sit down inside and someone will come serve us shortly, on the couch is another young family with two small kids and someone with a lungi (similar to a long sarong) and a polo reading the paper which is covering most of his body. 

We get greeted by the guy we met the first time we came in, he takes us outside shows off the car, which has two red ribbons on the front bonnet, cute touch.  The guy who was reading the paper emerges, this time without the polo and I realise he is the priest.  We stand behind as he starts his chants, the front bonnet gets opened and he placed the tilak and haldi (turmeric) on three parts of the engine.  He proceeds to say a few mantras, puts his polo back on goes inside and reads the paper again. (Apologies for the poor quality of images)

Then some guy who works there insists he takes a photo of us and the car (um ok?) so we give a cheesy weird-what-is-happening-smile, and wonder how we can ask for our keys without offending everyone.

At this time my phone suddenly has reception (Vodafone post to follow) and I get a phone call, as I am chatting away I see about 10 workers coming towards our table.  BANG!

I jump up and see confetti flying everywhere. Right beside my right ear (same ear I held the phone against) is  a man gleefully smiling as he had very proudly popped a confetti gun.  The workers that were approaching us were now coming with a velvet tray in their hands and on the loudspeaker Cliff Richards song “Congratulations” is blasting.  The velvet tray and its followers come to a standstill, and someone slowly hands us a rose.  It was handed to my husband so delicately I wasn't sure if he was being serenaded.  Then came a bag of chocolates (pretty convinced he was being serenaded now), then a wooden photo frame with the photo of us and the car (well that solved that mystery), a Ganesh statue and finally our keys (hallelujah).  

The song is still blaring and I don’t think they realise this song is about a wedding, but who am I to stop this celebration.  Every staff member (about 25 people) in the store comes to shake our hands and congratulate us. We go ahead and shake everyone's hand, giving them a a thankful smile but wondering if I just dreamt what I had just witnessed.

There is no denying that Indians sure know how to celebrate, whether it’s weddings or festivals, and who knew but buying a car!  I would love to see the celebrations if we were buying a Merc.  Australia, I expect the whole works, fireworks included next time I buy a car.

Half Bked: Conducting Interviews

So it’s taken ages to come up with a name for this blog, the term half baked, coined by Arvind Adiga in the book “The White Tiger”.  Now I was warned against this book, told it wasn't worth the read. Honestly I was so intrigued by the first paragraph where I was promised I would  indulge in a story about ‘the truth about Bangalore’. Well I wasn't, but I love the term half baked. It's just the perfect way to describe so many things I come across here in Bangalore, the term to describe all those things that are just not quite right. So here it is my blog, the real truth about Bangalore, well at least my truth.  My adjustment to India, my 180 degree career change and the journey involving me facing multiple half baked ideas, situations and people along the way.  

So we have moved to Bangalore to set-up and run an E-tailing business.  Bangalore, the IT capital of India.  The Silicon Valley of the subcontinent. Liars.

Now I can’t tell you how much I wish I was exaggerating about how hard it is to find quality workers in India.   For all those big companies in the USA, UK or Australia who have outsourced call centres and IT departments to India, WHAT WERE YOU THINKING? 

Nothing gets done on time, and even if you give yourself a 3 week leeway, it still won't be done. The excuses go from bad to worse, where just yesterday we were told "You've waited 5 months, you can wait a few more days" and "You should be happy I'm even picking up your calls" I'm sorry, I'm paying you for a service that was promised to be done in a week...and I should be happy?

I haven't done any sort of IT work or coding since high school, so you can imagine what my technical skill level is at. If you ask our web developers to do anything, and i mean something as simple as turning text to bold the standard response is "no sir, it cannot be done" Yes, even as a girl i get called sir...I don't even bother to ask.  Even when my husband tells them how to do it, the response is still..[insert indian accent here] "no it cannot be done" 

For those of you who told us it won’t be a problem and we will have so many people to choose from, I hope you're happy, because we believed you.  The worst thing is, many people who told us this were from Bangalore in the IT world. I'm guessing you just thought it was a joke and want to see us writhe in frustration. A bit of I suffered, so now you suffer. It’s a sick joke. 

We've put up job descriptions on websites equivalent to seek.com, used recruiters, gotten recommendations. It's not that we haven't gotten a response, the response has been huge, it's finding that diamond in the rough..scratch that, we would take a normal pebble right about now.  

Resumes

We have got some beauties with introductions like “I believe the harder you work the heavier you get”. 

They’ll apply for a technical job but haven’t even heard of the program used, never coded in that language, or have any experience in coding. 

Or they'll apply for a technical web developer job with a chemical engineering degree, a hospitality degree or an administration degree.  C'mon do you not even look at what the job description is?  

To try and cut down on these resumes, I figured I would start with phone interviews, anyone who seems decent after that we could do a face-to-face interview.  Standard procedure, or so I thought.

So I start dialling the numbers

“Hi I recently got your resume, I was wondering if you had a few minutes so I could ask you a few questions”

Answer 1: eh?

So I try again, this time a little slower.. eh?

I try in Hindi... eh? 

beep beep beep

Answer 2: "Can you call me back?"

"Sure, what time?"

They give a stated time, I call them back, and get no answer. Right…there goes that

If I actually get through I start with some pretty basic questions

Answers to any question I ask.. yh…y…ok…and no I'm not trying to be cool and leave out vowels. They didn't pronounce any.

So I give up on phone interviews, it's honestly frustrating when no-one can understand you.  I can do a mean Indian accent and people still don't understand me.  So for all those Indian students who complain that 'foreigners' should learn to understand the Indian accent..well right back at ya.

We scrapped the idea of phone interviews and decided the concept is just not understood here.  I mean even if you want a phone connection, someone comes to your house just to meet you and give you a form and then 6 months later you might have a working phone.  

So we scheduled some face-to-face interviews

• The first 4 people didn't bother to show up.
• Two people kept saying i'm 10 minutes away for about 90 minutes.
• One person came two and a half hours early and demanded he does his interview then

Other people come 1.5 hours late and have the audacity to think its fine and don’t bother apologising.  He then proceeds to show attitude, has never even looked at our website, has no idea what we do.  So we explain it to him, but obviously realise he is not right for the job. He proceeds to show more attitude and ask if we even had the same level of skills he did.  He had next to zero skills.

Skype Interviews

So we found some, what we thought eligible candidates however they lived in another state.  After explaining we would like to so a technical interview with them giving them a weeks notice, telling them what program we use and suggesting they download a free copy to have a look.  We would call them on Skype and see how it goes

So the girl answers the call, and we can see what seems like  2 or 3 people behind her, odd, but fine, whatever.

Proceed to talk about the program and how she should have had enough time to play around with it.  Her eyes getting wider and wider, her mouth opening in a shocked expression and clearly not hiding the fact that she hadn't done anything she proceeds to respond with “yes yes I've done all that”

Her friends continue to talk in the background, she giggles and when we ask her politely that maybe she should be alone so she could concentrate, proceeds to giggle at her friends.

Needless to say, she had absolutely no idea about any of the questions either.

So, for all of you who said this would be easy.  I have many explicit phrases running through my head for you, and if anyone wants a job in Bangalore, send us your resume, if you can answer a phone call properly, you will probably get the job.