Terms I learned this year
Yak Shaving Yak shaving refers to a task, that leads you to perform another related task and so on, and so on — all distracting you from your original goal. This is sometimes called “going …
Category: startuplife
Leap of faith
Building early-stage products require a big leap of faith on the ideas/products which don’t exist. In fact, I think there is some level of “stupidity” needed to build products at a very early stage. Of …
Three management principles
Three management principles I read while browsing the internet (of course over the past few years). I had this WOW reaction when I read about these for the first time. While it totally makes sense, …
X factor
I’m a huge fan of planes, learning about accidents of planes (both Air Crash Investigation and National Geographic Investigation are my favorite). Among all the aircraft crisis, of the best is the landing of the …
Doing things that don’t scale
Startups are all about doing things that don’t scale. In fact, there is an interesting and famous article by Paul Graham on the same topic. http://paulgraham.com/ds.html. If you are an entrepreneur or planning to start …
Three principles
Meaning of Life This is something I (and I’m sure many others) have been pondering for many years. We all already know the answer to the question for “The answer to life, meaning, and everything”. …
Growth
All good companies (including ours) focus on growth and make sure they allocate a budget for their growth. Without a clear focus on growth, it is impossible to run a successful business. The term “growth …
Johnny Gaddaar
The main reason for me to write about this movie is a talk I’ve watched by Max Levchin. I’ve uploaded the 3-minute video where he talks about picking the right co-founder. The entire talk is …
Neutral State
Startups are crazy! Things look so positive one minute and everything goes to negative next minute. Same way, things look so fucked up one minute, and then there is the ray of hope. In a …
Hiring great people
The following is an excerpt from one of the documents we follow in our hiring process. It’s obvious we want to hire great people. No sane person will advise otherwise. There are different definitions of …
Founder Stupidity
Founders are core to the company they create. They are supposed to smart, great in problem-solving, and at some level should be able to visualize the future. I recently had some one talk to me …
The Last Episode
I’ve always enjoyed the commencement speech made by Steve Jobs at Stanford. It is everyone out there should listen at least once. You can read/view the entire speech here at https://news.stanford.edu/2005/06/14/jobs-061505/. The best part about …
Books to read – Q4/18
One of the downsides of running a company is that you get caught up with so many problems to solve ‘at this moment,’ that you miss the focus to think long term. Especially one of …
The People & The Problem
9 years since I’ve decided to start on my own. Looking back, not a bad decision after all. Looking ahead, excited only about two things. People I’m working with and the problem I’m solving. …
#define startup
There are a lot of ways to define a startup. Paul Graham defines a startup as growth. This is how I would define it. A startup is an interesting & brutal game. The reason why …
Who built Interviewstreet?
The answer for the above question was always “Vivek & Hari”, but not anymore. To give an idea on from when to when we built things and now who is “actually” building the company. From …
Hiring
Start as if you are going to stick to it for the next 10 years. Hire as if you are going to quit in the next 3 months. Status check: Part 1 – Done Part …
Proud
A few days ago, a website (hmm, not just any website though) happened to mention my name in one of their posts. A lot of people congratulated (for what) and some even said “You should be so …
10 commandments for excellent customer support
If you are serious about customer support, then you will wake up in the middle of the night, search for your mobile phone and your heart should skip a beat when you don’t find it …
My TODO Notebook.
When I used to work from bangalore, I had this 300 pages notebook. I used to carry it everywhere and write my TODOs. I stopped using it after I moved to chennai. I happened to …
So, can your careers page attract rockstar hackers?
Hiring good candidates is a problem for every single company out there.. no matter small or big. We at interviewstreet attack the tip of the iceberg by filtering good programmers from the rest. People say, …
Advices…
More than an year since I’ve quit IBM and into startup world. Too many things to write.. Things moving at such a rapid rate that if I write something today, tomorrow it might not be …
One month @ Interviewstreet
One month since I’ve quit IBM. 1 month.. 30 days… 720 hrs… So, how was the experience as an entrepreneur? How does it feel to work all on my own without a big fat cheque …
MVP’s Super 10 :-)
The summary of the story startupCount += 10; mentorCount++; Yes, MVP has announced their new batch of 10 startups. To make things more exciting, they have Indus Khaitan in the team. Things you might know …
Interviewstreet
Yes, I’ve quit IBM and now the signature in my emails says Harishankaran Software Developer, Interviewstreet.com Now that I can post anything I want (not that IBM stopped me writing what I wanted to write …