Naval: The Boston ecosystem has always regretting that they've sort of lost these companies.
India has to make sure it doesn't lose as entrepreneurs. And the way to do that is to give them the freedom to innovate. Everyone should be an entrepreneur.
Naval: The Boston ecosystem has always regretting that they've sort of lost these companies.
India has to make sure it doesn't lose as entrepreneurs. And the way to do that is to give them the freedom to innovate. Everyone should be an entrepreneur.
Everyone has a phone should be able to get a job through the phone. There's one level beyond that, that comes after that, which is everyone has a phone, should be a creator for the phone. And that's what platforms are enabling.
There's the old, famous New Yorker cartoon with a dog on the internet, on the computer and it says on the internet, nobody knows you're a dog. Well, yeah, on the internet, nobody knows who you are or where you are or what you are. All they care about is your output
And that is incredibly liberating for a country that's so large and has such a good English speaking population, India can win, it just has to remove shackles.
There's nothing to add. There are things to take away that are in the way of people who want to create excellent celebrity creators.
Question by Vishesh: Right now, SaaS startups are big in India, like KhataBook and PagarBook, but do you think we need technology startups in India, like Open AI or crypto and VR also, how do we come up with new technologies?
Naval's Answer: Elon Musk got started with Zip2. There's absolutely no shame whatsoever, and in fact, there's good things in doing the blocking and tackling SaaS company if that's your passion, or if that's what you're good at, you should go after that
You don't have to try to, like push the frontier of AI. In fact, if you get a win under your belt and you've got some capital, then it makes it easier to take a bigger swing with the next one.
Sam Altman before he did Open AI, he was at Whitefield as president of YC before that, but his company before there was Looped, which was the local locality social network.
Elon Musk, before he did Tesla and SpaceX, he did Zip2, which was like an online yellow pages.
So it's, it's a natural progression for entrepreneurs. And I would argue, even for investors, sort of seeing myself. Is, we all start out doing the quote unquote easy stuff, the financial stuff, the SaaS, the consumer plate, etc.
But eventually we get bored that we all want to do something bigger with our lives. And so that's when we start going into rocketry and aircraft and crypto and VR and AI and so on.
This is a natural progression. It's got to work their way up the chain, uh, do all the SaaS stuff to your heart's content, make a lot of money, gain a lot of expertise and then go looking for a meeting, and then you'll create the next level of things.
Balaji: I think that's right. And I think, in particular there's just zero shame in doing basic India clones. That's fine. Go and do that. Knock yourself out, execute on that.
If we're good at execution and then the next step will be obvious once you've got that first one. And that first one, it's actually pretty hard to get.
Part-II
— Atharva Kharbade (@athrvakhrbde) January 6, 2021
Startup Bharat: @naval & @balajis
The full Clubhouse session in text
Thread Continued
More from Atharva Kharbade
This is the story of a guy named Alex, who made $1 million in just 5 months by selling pixels of his website's homepage, when he was broke
16 years later, now he's the CEO of a company worth more than $2 billion
Thread ↓
1/
Year 2005
Alex has no money in his bank account, and just after 1 month his classes at a three-year university are gonna begin.
Being really determined to avoid student debt, he pulls an all nighter to brainstorm on a question, "How can I become a millionaire"
2/
Twenty minutes later, he had his answer: Sell one million pixels of advertising space on a website for $1 each.
"I thought, 'This is one of those crazy, quirky ideas, but it just might work.I've got nothing to lose.' " says Alex.
3/
Tew already had some experience with website design, so with a paltry $100, he quickly bought a domain name and some basic web hosting services and had his website, https://t.co/APDYhSjFTQ, up and running in two days.
4/
The concept was simple: Businesses could buy 10x10 or larger blocks of advertising space for a $1 per pixel and place their logos and links on his site.
16 years later, now he's the CEO of a company worth more than $2 billion
Thread ↓
1/
Year 2005
Alex has no money in his bank account, and just after 1 month his classes at a three-year university are gonna begin.
Being really determined to avoid student debt, he pulls an all nighter to brainstorm on a question, "How can I become a millionaire"
2/
Twenty minutes later, he had his answer: Sell one million pixels of advertising space on a website for $1 each.
"I thought, 'This is one of those crazy, quirky ideas, but it just might work.I've got nothing to lose.' " says Alex.
3/
Tew already had some experience with website design, so with a paltry $100, he quickly bought a domain name and some basic web hosting services and had his website, https://t.co/APDYhSjFTQ, up and running in two days.
4/
The concept was simple: Businesses could buy 10x10 or larger blocks of advertising space for a $1 per pixel and place their logos and links on his site.
It's been 2.5 years now since I'm on antidepressants and many people closely related to me still believe that depression is something that's "just in the head"
Our society needs to seriously rethink of mental health. Our society needs to be educated
3 years ago, during my JEE prep, when I went into clinical depression, no one could diagnose me of it. I had every symptom of it.
I literally got no help. This is not about me, I'm telling this from a general 3rd person view.
Any help that I got was wearing a ring made of horseshoe of a black horse of a specific breed. All the blame was slapped on 'Shani'
I was being taken to orphanages and slum areas so that I could see that my ailments are nothing in front of theirs.
Loads of toxic positivity
I lived in a PG hostel. I used to go to institute. Used to meet numerous people everyday. But not a single person could diagnose me of any medical condition. Not their fault, even I didn't what I'd been going through
Our society needs to seriously rethink of mental health. Our society needs to be educated
3 years ago, during my JEE prep, when I went into clinical depression, no one could diagnose me of it. I had every symptom of it.
I literally got no help. This is not about me, I'm telling this from a general 3rd person view.
Any help that I got was wearing a ring made of horseshoe of a black horse of a specific breed. All the blame was slapped on 'Shani'
I was being taken to orphanages and slum areas so that I could see that my ailments are nothing in front of theirs.
Loads of toxic positivity
Yes, \U0001d5fd\U0001d5fc\U0001d600\U0001d5f6\U0001d601\U0001d5f6\U0001d603\U0001d5f6\U0001d601\U0001d606 can be \U0001d601\U0001d5fc\U0001d605\U0001d5f6\U0001d5f0
— Atharva Kharbade (@athrvakhrbde) September 25, 2020
Before you let your ignorance kick in and make you laugh out loud, try seeing life with a new perspective
No BS
A thread...
Read this if you use sentences like "Good vibes only" or "Just be positive and stay happy"
I lived in a PG hostel. I used to go to institute. Used to meet numerous people everyday. But not a single person could diagnose me of any medical condition. Not their fault, even I didn't what I'd been going through
More from Startup
The dirty inside secret most first-time entrepreneurs don't know.
14 tools I use to steal from competitors, and build million-dollar businesses.
Housekeeping note:
Don't do anything that destroys your reputation. Copying what works is a simple & practical strategy, but don't cross any boundaries.
In this thread, I'll show you how to steal your competitors' traffic, product ideas, and customers in a 100% fair way.
1. Steal their social media traffic
Drop your competitors' url in https://t.co/n4squ8fjHh
It will tell you what % of their web traffic comes from which social media platform
Looks like this
Generally, this traffic will be from ads and not content. To steal their social traffic, you'll need to steal their ad strategy.
If they're getting their traffic from Facebook...
2. Steal their Facebook ads
Go to Facebook Ad Library and find ads that your competitor has been running for 6+ months.
All of these ads are likely profitable https://t.co/bgqtSOvAe2
14 tools I use to steal from competitors, and build million-dollar businesses.
Housekeeping note:
Don't do anything that destroys your reputation. Copying what works is a simple & practical strategy, but don't cross any boundaries.
In this thread, I'll show you how to steal your competitors' traffic, product ideas, and customers in a 100% fair way.
1. Steal their social media traffic
Drop your competitors' url in https://t.co/n4squ8fjHh
It will tell you what % of their web traffic comes from which social media platform
Looks like this
Generally, this traffic will be from ads and not content. To steal their social traffic, you'll need to steal their ad strategy.
If they're getting their traffic from Facebook...
2. Steal their Facebook ads
Go to Facebook Ad Library and find ads that your competitor has been running for 6+ months.
All of these ads are likely profitable https://t.co/bgqtSOvAe2
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1/ Some initial thoughts on personal moats:
Like company moats, your personal moat should be a competitive advantage that is not only durable—it should also compound over time.
Characteristics of a personal moat below:
2/ Like a company moat, you want to build career capital while you sleep.
As Andrew Chen noted:
3/ You don’t want to build a competitive advantage that is fleeting or that will get commoditized
Things that might get commoditized over time (some longer than
4/ Before the arrival of recorded music, what used to be scarce was the actual music itself — required an in-person artist.
After recorded music, the music itself became abundant and what became scarce was curation, distribution, and self space.
5/ Similarly, in careers, what used to be (more) scarce were things like ideas, money, and exclusive relationships.
In the internet economy, what has become scarce are things like specific knowledge, rare & valuable skills, and great reputations.
Like company moats, your personal moat should be a competitive advantage that is not only durable—it should also compound over time.
Characteristics of a personal moat below:
I'm increasingly interested in the idea of "personal moats" in the context of careers.
— Erik Torenberg (@eriktorenberg) November 22, 2018
Moats should be:
- Hard to learn and hard to do (but perhaps easier for you)
- Skills that are rare and valuable
- Legible
- Compounding over time
- Unique to your own talents & interests https://t.co/bB3k1YcH5b
2/ Like a company moat, you want to build career capital while you sleep.
As Andrew Chen noted:
People talk about \u201cpassive income\u201d a lot but not about \u201cpassive social capital\u201d or \u201cpassive networking\u201d or \u201cpassive knowledge gaining\u201d but that\u2019s what you can architect if you have a thing and it grows over time without intensive constant effort to sustain it
— Andrew Chen (@andrewchen) November 22, 2018
3/ You don’t want to build a competitive advantage that is fleeting or that will get commoditized
Things that might get commoditized over time (some longer than
Things that look like moats but likely aren\u2019t or may fade:
— Erik Torenberg (@eriktorenberg) November 22, 2018
- Proprietary networks
- Being something other than one of the best at any tournament style-game
- Many "awards"
- Twitter followers or general reach without "respect"
- Anything that depends on information asymmetry https://t.co/abjxesVIh9
4/ Before the arrival of recorded music, what used to be scarce was the actual music itself — required an in-person artist.
After recorded music, the music itself became abundant and what became scarce was curation, distribution, and self space.
5/ Similarly, in careers, what used to be (more) scarce were things like ideas, money, and exclusive relationships.
In the internet economy, what has become scarce are things like specific knowledge, rare & valuable skills, and great reputations.
