My Quotes

My quotes, my values, my first-principles and my lessons!!! There are things you will find me parrot from time to time, either because it is part of my values or it is a lesson that I have learned, likely the hard-way. This page documents some of those and hope that this also serves me a reminder of my distilled lessons from my experience. 

If you have worked with me in the past and think I missed any, then please drop in a note to remind me of words/phrases I have uttered.

Entrepreneurship

1. My work is my signature. 
2. It is perhaps easier to find a soul-mate than a co-founder.
3. There is a world of difference between "want to try out" and "actually trying it out".
4. At the very least, entrepreneurship is a test of your strengths, weaknesses and values. There is more to it though -- your personal, professional and business circumstances, that can make or break your success.
5. You are blessed to fail a few times in your entrepreneurship, because you genuinely become a better person.
6. It is not how long you stay with a person or organization that matters. What matters is how truthful and valuable you have been during your time with that person or organization.
7. Dare to fail, only if you think you can learn something out of it, for your betterment.
8. You should have the strength to persevere with grit but then you should also know when to quit. Your values and priorities help in your decision making under these stressful circumstances.
9. Entrepreneurship is not a pleasure trip but an adventure that tests you on many fronts.
10. Entrepreneurship is like driving a car and a lot of things could go wrong; sometimes it's the car, sometimes it's the road, sometimes it's the traffic, sometimes it's the driver, sometimes it's the owner of the car and the other times it's just nature.
11. ..

Technology

1. Scaling systems is Science. Building systems that can scale is an Art.
2. Tech is hard. You can't have both wide breadth and deep depth in technologies. You got to make your trade-off. 
3. There is no "I" in team, at least until successful delivery is proclaimed. But there is surely a "You" in bug, the moment one is found. Ask your team if in doubt :)
4. Code is malleable but not without ripple-effects.
5. Code is burden. Reduce it by not writing one if possible. And when you do write, be sure enough that the others who read it would have appreciations for your work.
6. Document your architecture like a playbook. The pros far outweigh the cons.
7. Tech is ridiculously hard because of its rate of evolution. 
8. In Tech, both success and failure are fleeting; your choice of tech isn't right or wrong for ever.
9. In Tech, when you think X can't do it, it proves you wrong with its evolution. In the same breadth, when you think Y solves your problem the right way, Z crops up solving it more efficiently. 
10. ..

Product

1. A product has two phases : 0-1 (until a product proved its market fitness) and 1-onwards (life of product post market-fitness). Each has its own set of challenges.
2. How less an end-user thinks while using your product defines the test of your UX.
3. Product-Market fitness is learning more about your competitors and your market. The former is a low-hanging fruit that is often overlooked only to make your journey longer and harder.
4. If you can please your business, you end up being safe. If you can educate your business, you end up becoming a Hero. Pick the hard route for enlightenment.
5. For effective product management, know thy constraints! 
6. Test of transparency in product management is the first question that the business asks you as a Product Owner -- "Where are we today?" or "Why are we here today?". 
7. PMI certification is a business model geared more towards certification business than project management in the Waterfall era. In the Agile era, we now have SAFe doing it. Things are nice on paper, but practice trumps theory. 
8. The best product managers are the ones that realize they know very little and thus observe the customers, take their feedback, incorporate it to evolve the product and learn from customers action on it.
9. ..

People

1. Bad habits die hard while the good ones need constant care and protection to survive.
2. It is not about right or wrong. It is about choices and its consequences.
3. What is illegal or immoral, is wrong; just don't do it. That leaves a world of everything else that is right. For the plethora of right things out there, just think choices and its consequences. Thinking this way would keep you away from regret and remorse.
4. You got to lead sometimes from the front and sometimes from the back. It is not a forked-road that you drive on but an option-choices to pick one depending on your circumstances.
5. "It is not rocket science" is polite way to admit "I don't know" but at the cost of offending the person who asked you for an explanation.
6. Do not cheat. For nothing hurts more than the feeling of being cheated.
7. It is okay to fail. What matters is you learn your lessons and take steps to not repeat it.
8. I will not be my team's bottleneck. I let my work do the talking for itself and thus keep me redundant.
9. You can’t accept defeat, if you carry the burden of your ego.
10. No one is always right. No one is always wrong. And so do lend your ears to what others got to say.
11. The better way to manage people is to stop managing and start influencing.
12. Dissent is not disrespect!
13. Democracy is hard because you have to be prepared for open dissent. Dictatorship is even harder because you got to be prepared to be overthrown.
14. The best way to manage people is by influence. And the best way to influence people is lead by example.
15. TEAM is when "Together Everyone Achieves More".
16. To err is human, repeating it is what makes you evil/insane.
17. ..

Note: You are free to use these in your works but please do care to attribute it to me for saying it first and saying it loud enough. This isn't a big ask right?