Rajiv's View

Mensch is a Yiddish word for a person who does not look for a payoff to serve others. He does it out of altruism.
Menschs treat everyone with respect.
It is about integrity and doing things right and the right way.
Parents teach us integrity but growing up, integrity becomes relative.
In the end, you are judged by how much you made the world better.
You have a moral obligation to pay back society.

In the 90s Entrepreneurship was about cleverness.
It was about disintermediating brick and mortar.
Today it is about technology.
If I am clueless about your technology, it is a good sign.
Companies of the past wanted to build a brand.
Today it is about winning the business. (We have moved from Power Point to Excel and plain accounting)
Financing was about grabbing an audience and figuring out how to raise money.
Now, it is about bootstrapping. Sell your beta versions to do it.
Back then it was MBAs with German Cars.
Today the key employee is an engineer.
Kawasaki's law: Every engineer is work 1/2 a million. Every MBA is worth -1/4 million.
Getting the word out then was with advertising. Today it is about PR. Get others to say good things about you.
It is about Evangelism, selling them a dream, to make the world a better place.
Apple is doing well because of its evangelists.
The scope at that time for a company was global. It is about acting local. It is about getting sales in your local area.
Business development was about alliances back then. Noone had a decent business models.
Today it is about revenue.
Raison the etre of the company was about liquidity.
Today it is about passion.
The big picture then was about buiding something big. This is the same. Do something 10 times better not 10% better. It is better to fail at something grand than to fail at something marginal.

10 slides
20 minutes: A windows laptop will take 40 mts to work with a projector.
Your smallest font should be 30. This would mean less text and it forces you to know your material.

It is hard to raise money. You may never do it.
Bootstrapping must be in the DNA of a company.
It is worse to have too much money than too little money.
Yahoo and Google did it with no money, either with a good business model or by evangelism.
If you do get VC money. take it but do not spend it.

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