The Handshake, Cheek Kiss, Deep Bow and everything in between..

Posted on May 1, 2011 by Rodinhood

So, I’ve been kissed, shaken, stirred, pecked and God knows what… a million times. This is what I think about global greeting habits and how they make me feel:

The Handshake

It’s the least sensitive of greetings. Handshakes are doled out like free fliers at the mall. They are inexpensive & cheap. It’s the safest when you are in a country whose customs are unknown and the easiest way of contracting a nice virus.

Handshakes are limp, soft, hard, knuckle breaking and slippery. The slippery one is the one in which you extend your full hand but the monkey on the other side just sticks out 4 fingers – that quickly slither away. The handshake that irritates me the most is what I call the ‘infatuation’ handshake – in which my newfound lover (always a man I’ve never met before) just doesn’t want to let go of my hand!! It takes a solid wrenching to escape!

I don’t like handshakes. They are ‘personality less’ and definitely not memorable.

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Are you happily married?

Posted on April 25, 2011 by Rodinhood

They say that happily married couples begin to look like each other as they age and grow older. I don’t know how far that is true, but I do know for sure that getting the right co-founder(s) for your business can be as rewarding as the soul mate you may have found or may still be searching for.

It takes two to tango

 

Hewlett Packard, Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, Larsen and Toubro – look around and will be stunned by the number of legendary firms that have been built by two or more partners. There is a magic that comes alive when like-minded people come together to create an enterprise. Sure, there are businesses like Facebook or Apple that are one man armies, but if you speak to Marc Zuckerberg or Steve Jobs, I am sure they would agree to some of these concepts:

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Posted in Experiences, Start-Up, VC & Corporate Stuff | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 14 Comments

Which floor are you on?

Posted on April 15, 2011 by Rodinhood

 

Which Floor are you on?

Which Floor are you on?

I consciously notice the floors of the buildings that I visit and try to indentify the people who occupy these floors.

That’s where I see interesting patterns between management styles and the floors of buildings:

The Ground Floor

The people on the ground floor are ‘hands on’.

Mop in the hand, doing the dirty work. Sitting in an office that has no cabins. Talking to the people around them while trying to manage the crowds that come in. Quickly getting hot and tired. Blowing their fuse while trying to be civil. Just wanting to do everything themselves.

The challenge being on the ground floor is that it’s easy to lose perspective. You can’t elevate yourself and peep outside – to get a chance to view what’s new & happening in the big wide world outside or spot encroachments that appear dangerously near you. Your life begins and ends on the ground floor.

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Which Train are you Riding?

Posted on April 5, 2011 by Rodinhood

Often, when I ride a train, I look at my co-passengers and wonder where have they come from and where are they headed. The train is my metaphor of travelling – not distances but careers and lives, and how the decisions that we make may turn into the best or worst journeys ever!

The Subway

Recently I had the privilege to interview someone who had changed his jobs 13 times in 4 years. When I told him that in 48 months, changing 13 jobs meant that he had not even spent an average of 4 months in a job, he chuckled and said, ‘Yes Sir, I am in big demand’. Honestly, I felt like charging him for the coffee that my office had served him. How I wish I had read his resume before getting into the room.  (He was one of those frivolous introductions one has to meet as an obligation).

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Eleven Learnings I swear by!

Posted on April 1, 2011 by Rodinhood

It’s been some fun filled years as a ‘digital’ entrepreneur. With a couple of good hits, some misses and a few big bets, I have chuckled, cried and framed these 11 learnings to carry with me all my life.

Don't drop that ball :-(

Don’t drop that ball :-(

1. Just an ‘Idea’ is worth a ‘dropped cricket catch’

An idea by itself, despite its greatness, is worthless. Nada. Zilch. It’s all about massive and backbreaking execution. When I founded Contests2win in 1998 (first ever brand contesting site in the world), I thought that my idea would take the world by storm. Nothing of the sort happened. It took me a good 2 years just to convince people to meet me so that I could explain the idea!

I purposely say ‘dropped cricked catch’ because not executing a great idea can be as painful as dropping a cricket catch – you will not be able to forgive yourself. Example – the Winklevoss twins who had the original ‘facebook’ idea and innocently assigned someone else (hmmm…we know who) to execute it.

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Posted in Experiences, Internet, Media, Mobile and Tech | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 8 Comments

Madam, Are you Pregnant?

Posted on March 28, 2011 by Rodinhood

We had established a 30 odd headcount office in Shanghai in early 2001 and were steadily ramping up our operations as Mobile2win, China. Contests2win and Softbank were the original investors and we were operating under strict Mainland China’s government’s guidelines.

As the paperwork increased, we began looking around to hire secretarial staff.  As soon as we had spread the word, we intriguingly began receiving resumes of many women – all in their twenties, married and well settled.  One afternoon, one of our rather talkative and assertive Sales Head took me in confidence and revealed something quite chilling – He said that all those women who had applied were actually pregnant and were applying for jobs, that they could lock into and then claim maternity benefits as per the dictated statutory guidelines. This was a standard ploy of gaining  ‘free employment’ and we should be avoid falling into such traps.

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Do you visit your eye doctor when you want to lose weight?

Posted on March 24, 2011 by rodinhood

Shall I be going to an Eye Doctor?

Shall I be going to an Eye Doctor?

When was the last time you went to your eye doctor to lose some weight?

Well, you probably didn’t. And even if you did, your eye doctor probably looked at you quizzically, shrugged her shoulders and asked you to go to a gym instead.

If this seems so obvious, I am puzzled as to why smart, educated and super-achiever folks can’t figure out the difference between ‘insurance’ and ‘investment’.

Insurance, in my limited opinion is the action to protect one’s assets – be it property, health, or life.

So, if I have bought a new car and have put a substantial amount of my hard-earned money into it, I will make sure that it’s safe and secure and doesn’t get stolen. But cars do get robbed and hence there is something out there called Insurance – to protect my investment. So someone in the big bad world is ready to take a risk of my car getting stolen and compensates me by buying a new car for me, in return for a very small sum of money (premium) that I pay every year.

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Posted in Just for fun | Tagged , , , , , , , | 11 Comments