What’s the goal of life? Every one of us is an expert at answering this innocuous question. Some say life is all about compassion for other beings; some say it is about achieving greatness; some say it is about being a good father/mother/brother/sister, and yet some (like me) say there’s no goal in life and it is inherently meaningless. Who’s right, who’s wrong? We can do an endless debate about it, yet people’s opinion about what life is about seldom change. Opinions on life are not formed on an intellectual level, rather they arise from within and then we search for its justification.

No matter how much we disagree about meaning (or lack of it) in life, there’s one obvious fundamental fact that everyone will agree with. It’s almost a tautology, but while we’re alive, we exist, and this existence should rather be pleasant than be disgusting. So, every one of us in our respective ways, seek to be happy. Even for people who suffer tremendously because they believe in a difficult cause (say reporting from a warzone) do so because feel happiness at a deep, emotional level.

Happiness in life may come from passions, relationships, experiences, creative expression or achieving greatness. So even if we disagree on the goal of life, we can at least agree that ultimately it is happiness that we seek.

The key question for life then becomes: how to be happy?

There are two obvious ways: a) we all have our intuitions and ideas on what we think will make us happy; b) we can read books like Stumbling on Happiness or embrace movements like Positive Psychology to understand what scientific research says about happiness. For example, research says that people who are married are generally happier. Research also says that additional money, as long as you are living in poverty, actually increases happiness but once past the milestone of middle class living, the difference between making $50,000 a year and $50 million a year has hardly any impact on happiness.

So, from intuition or scientific research, we develop a number of hypotheses on what’s going to make us happier. Maybe a few additional friends will make us happier, or maybe cultivating a passion will do the job, or maybe entering into an intimate relationship is the best thing to do. All these plans for being happier sound too good to be true, but where’s the catch? If being joyful is so straightforward, why is only one quarter of population say they’re “very happy”? What about the rest? Are they not happy enough?

The pursuit of happiness: external v/s internal factors

In the pursuit of happiness, many of our activities involve depending on external factors, some of which may be beyond our control or influence. If we solely depend on such external factors for being happy, we risk facing rejection and failure, and hence negatively impacting our current happiness and limiting our potential future happiness. An example would be the scientific result that married people are happier. Now if the right person comes along, and you get married and thereby become happier, nothing like it! In pursuit of this goal, you can, of course, socialize and try increasing your chances of finding the right person. But what if that right person never comes and you never get married? Life is full of uncertainties and this is surely a possibility (however remote). Another example would be passions that are seeped in external factors. Suppose someone watches a lot of National Geographic Channel and is fascinated with the variety of experiences this world offers. He develops an internal idea that travelling the world would give him immense happiness, but if his life situations (maybe he is poor, married or bedridden, or maybe he is all) don’t allow him to travel, should he be less happy because of this fact?

Am I advocating resigning to one’s fate? Yes, and no. As long as you are happy, what’s wrong with resigning to fate? Though I’m not saying we shouldn’t try changing our external circumstances. What I am saying is that we cannot factors beyond our control, so it is foolish to rely on them to bring us happiness. Of course, we can (and should) always try to change external circumstances but we cannot put our happiness in jeopardy for that. If that external circumstance changes (by luck or effort), nothing like it and we should enjoy the happiness that comes along with it. But getting frustrated because you couldn’t move that rock which stands between you and happiness is quite childish. If the rock doesn’t seem like moving even after a great deal of effort, simply move on. You cannot blame yourself and feel frustrated because you couldn’t change the world or your circumstances.

Even better is the situation where you don’t need to move any rocks to be happy. There are many internal factors for happiness that solely depend on your own ideas, thoughts and emotions. One of the most important factors that impact your happiness is your outlook in life. For example, if you idolize greatness, yet are not able to achieve it, simply change your outlook. Look at happy people around you who have achieved nothing significant in life. Is their life any worse than those who have won Nobel prizes or founded billion dollar companies? Another factor you can control is being at ease with yourself. If you crave for external validation of your life, work and actions, you set yourself for disappointment and unhappiness. Similarly, if you crave for people’s company and don’t seem to get enough of it, you are setting yourself up for unhappiness.

I realize that evolution has constructed humans as social creatures who seek approval and company of fellow beings. But evolution never really cared about an individual’s happiness. It’s blind to my happiness as long as I reproduce. So, even though evolution makes it hard for us to being happy by ourselves alone, doing so is still preferable to the harder job of changing the world. Demanding the world that it should give you happiness is an act doomed for failure.

Tricks I use to be happy

One of the tricks I personally use (and still trying to get better at it) is to cultivate passions that do not depend on external world. I feel happy whenever I’m writing, so I try to write as much as I can (this post is an example of it). I’m a curious person and like learning about different fields (these days, it is psychology, philosophy, brain and mind), so I keep reading books (GoodReads.com is an excellent resource for suggestions) and articles on Wikipedia. I also like to constantly improve upon different aspects related to my startup Wingify (things like product features, user experience, customer support mechanisms, marketing tactics, etc.). Just making Wingify better than what it was yesterday gives me joy and, as opposed to something external like IPO or acquisition, improving Wingify is something that depends entirely on me.

My outlook that there’s no grand purpose in life and it is essentially meaningless make me not crave for possessions, wealth and greatness. Rather than depressing, my Nihilistic outlook is liberating and opens up easy paths for happiness. And my passions for writing and reading keep my busy and happy. My aim is to rely on myself to be happy and essentially detach my happiness from external factors that I cannot control. Note that this is not to say that I dislike wealth or greatness. I have respect for people who do great things, but I simply don’t want these things to impact my happiness levels. Similarly, it is not that I dislike socializing or don’t have friends. Far from it, I tremendously enjoy being with people. But I don’t want my friends or family to be sole determiners of my happiness.

Summary

The key to a happy life is to admire windfall of happiness but in absence and in spite of it, we should prepare ourselves to be happy even in a situation where all we have with us is ourselves.

Having heros is a dangerous habit. If you have a hero, expect to be disappointed and disillusioned when you discover they don’t approve of your interpretation of them. Your world will shatter when the hero that you respected so highly shrugs you and your ways off. You will then be forced to think: “how could my hero reject me, a person who is obviously shaped by the very same hero’s ideas and ways?“.

Suppose I respect Steve Jobs. Suppose he’s my hero; an ideal that I want to be. Obviously, I will try to emulate him and his ways. I will try developing my own point of view based on his thoughts. He likes simplicity, so I like simplicity. He likes good design, so I like good design. He can be ruthless and direct with other people, so I too should do the same. I’m in awe, and he is perfect. Of course, I don’t have to base my complete life on one hero; I can have multiple heros too. But if heros come to represent what I want to be, their ways ultimately dictate my life and choices.

Heros dictating one’s life is not bad by itself. But what is bad is the possibility of discovering that your hero doesn’t approve of your life. If being a Steve Jobs fan, I design a product and with childlike enthusiasm go and meet him to show my product. Now suppose he sends the whole thing away to trash and criticizes me, and laughs at my misunderstanding of his ideas. Wouldn’t this rejection be as shameful as it can get?

Rejection from others can be tolerated since you often rationalize them to be wrong. But accepting rejection from a hero is very painful. All your life you had been interpreting your heros’ lives and ideas, and one day they may scoff at just how mistaken you were! It’s not to say that heros will disregard you, but the mere possibility presents a strong case of not having heros in life. (You cannot obvious control or predict how your heros behave towards you when you go and meet them)

Do you not then set yourself for a (possible) big disappointment if you lift a hero higher than yourself? What would you do if his ideals, his values, and his way of life becomes an ideal, and he himself rejects your life? Why can’t you idolize ideas instead of people?

Also, be ready to be shocked when (and if) you discover even your heros have fallibilities; when you discover they could be wrong too; and that they too are ultimately humans (just like you and me).

Save yourself from such earthy embarrassment. Follow a simple rule in life: don’t have heros larger than yourself. Respect your opinion, values, ideas and ways above anyone else!

As Nietzsche famously said, “become who you are”.

We have casual face-to-face (and telephonic) conversations everyday. We chat with our friends, discuss latest gossip with colleagues and sometimes also strike up conversations with strangers while waiting for a bus or something. I have observed that in such casual conversations most people (impulsively) tend to agree with each other, no matter what is being discussed. For example, imagine this conversation: I meet my cousin at a family function and I bring up my love for Goa as a vacation spot. Irrespective of his own opinions, my cousin is likely to respond in this manner: “Yes, it is really a fun destination”. For all I know, he may have hated his experience in Goa last time, but because of unsaid conventions, most conversations enter into mutual appreciation mode. I agree to what you say, and you agree to what I say.

Why do people have affirmative casual conversations?

Because agreeing is much less riskier than disagreeing. Unless you strongly disagree on a topic, it simply isn’t worth confronting the other person with your disagreement. So what if you hate Goa? It isn’t worth upsetting rosy fantasies of your cousin who you only meet once in a while. This drive to agree with others is so strong that even if some people want to express their disagreement, they would qualify it with an acknowledgement first. For example, they may say “Goa is nice but I didn’t like the beaches. They were dirty”.

No, you’re not!

Of course, if someone brings up a sensitive topic (like religion, family, ethnicity or anything else you strongly care about), you would certainly disagree. For example, if my best friend says to me “Punjabis are rude and brash”, I will certainly confront him with my arguments. However, the problem is that some people qualify their disagreement even on topics they strongly care about. In hope to sound nice, they may say: “You may be right about Punjabis, but it is not 100% true because…”. Why in this world can’t you simply and plainly disagree?

People find it easier to disagree on online forums/platforms. This is because of two reasons:

• Our online identities are somewhat masked. My online handle @paraschopra is not as authentic representation of me as the words coming out of my mouth while I am having a face to face conversation. What this leads to is a somewhat emotionally detached point of view, where you argue based on facts not caring a lot about others’ reactions (because you can’t observe them online as you would do in a face to face conversation). As they say, you don’t have to be necessarily nice on the Internet.
• There is no immediacy in responding. One of the reasons why we tend to agree (in person) is because we subconsciously fear that we may not have enough time to justify our disagreement, so we risk coming across as a fool. But online it is different: you get enough time to think through your opinions and lay out your disagreement.

But, of course, anonymous people online can go crazy and simply disagree for disagreement’s sake. Obviously, this is not what I am arguing for. My point is that:

It’s not rude to disagree in personal conversations

Cowing to others’ opinions in a conversation is mark of a weak person. If you find disagreeing online easier, there is no reason why you shouldn’t stand for your opinions while talking in person or over phone. A conversation where all you do do is blindly agree with each other is a grand waste of time and is so boring. I say something, you agree. You say something, I agree. What are we doing here? Pleasuring each other?

Hell, yeah! Only people who disagree go on to make new theories.

Conversations with different opinions are much more interesting. If you don’t like Goa, just say it. Don’t qualify it, just tell me your reasons and we should be having a much more meaningful conversation. If you don’t like color of your friend’s newly painted house, just tell him that when he brings up this topic. Of course, you don’t have to bring up the color issue out of the blue. That would be rude. What wouldn’t be rude is to tell your friend that you find the color dull when he asks you: “Do you like this new color I have chosen?”. You shouldn’t lie. You shouldn’t agree just to be nice.

Please stop agreeing with others out of fear and impulsion. Stand firm on your opinons.

OK, so do you agree with me on this?

We all know that feeling when the past seems beautiful and there is an uncontrollable longing to belong to a time that has already passed. Most of us romance our carefree childhood and want to relive those special moments every now and then. Artists amongst us want to live in the ages when Picasso and Dali were creating their masterpieces. Present day scientists wish to witness the years when Einstein, Darwin or Newton were just about to change the Zeitgeist forever. And, don’t writers today pine for the times when George Orwell or Shakespeare produced one great work after the other? We entrepreneurs in computer/technology space, how much we fancy times when PC industry was coming to an age with Bill Gates’s BASIC and Steve Jobs’ Apple II.

When we witness a past age through a historical movie or a biography, it all comes vividly alive in our imagination and then we fantasize about what it must have been to live in those times. What if you could have witnessed Gandhi or Bhagat Singh during Indian freedom struggle? What about life during World War II? What if you could have lived in Victorian times where everything was so royal? And how utterly fantastic would it have been to witness man landing on moon? (Many of us are recent borns, so we only have romantic imagery for those moments.) No matter if we love or hate the past, we can’t deny that it does indeed seems to be more captivating than the present.

Past captures our imagination because so little of it is recorded. In fact, only the most interesting events of the past are recorded. When we read or watch about the past, we only get to observe tids and bits of events happening that historians and writers found worth recording. Evidently, nobody records that, for example, on March 25th, 1902 Einstein was utterly bored for the day and he passed his time by listening to news on a half-broken radio and lazily chatted up with neighbors. Even if Einstein lived a humdrum, normal life for months and years, it wouldn’t have probably got recorded or noticed by contemporaries or future historians (precisely because that period of time wasn’t interesting). Even if these uninteresting days in Einstein’s life get written about, they are given far less importance as compared to occasional, eventful days in his life. A biographer (or a writer) would spend a good chunk of her time simply to build it up to the moment when Einstein revealed his Theory of General Relativity. This event was monumental, so it makes sense to highlight it and do an extensive elaboration of Einstein’s life around it. It is obvious that no serious biographer would write a book that contained every small (and boring) bit about a Einstein’s life. Only worthwhile bits make it to history.

But the problem is that (in present) when we imagine the past, our imagination is obviously guided by whatever we know about the past. And, what we know about the past is only the juicy details. We can’t possibly imagine our heroes or people in romantic ages living boring, humdrum lives. We can’t imagine the past ages completely and truly because we simply don’t know or remember non-important parts. So, we extrapolate whatever past our imagination can reconstruct and imagine that whole of their lives and times must have been interesting. We fall in love with the past because we imagine it to be so damn interesting. However, we must not forget that past was once present and our fancy for the past is nothing but misguided.

Today’s present will probably be longed by future generations, so right here, right now, you have an excellent opportunity to make your present as interesting (or as boring) as the past you love!

(This post was inspired by absolutely drop-dead beautiful movie by Woody Allen: Midnight in Paris. Extending this logic of falling in love with the past, we can likewise imagine why people fall in love with our present day heros’ lives as well. What we hear about lives of others is, again, just the interesting parts. So our mental imagery of how actors, sport stars or celebrities we adore or admire is significantly biased by what we get to hear, read or see about them. And, remember, nobody talks about boring parts of life. They’re not worth writing or recording, apparently.)

Remember your childhood? Those were the times when on a cool, breezy, slightly-sunny morning, you blissfully played on freshly dewed grass. You threw your sandals away, and while your eyes darted everywhere around, you ran barefoot, feeling small yet sweet pangs of cold seeping into your body. You were so lost in your joy that you didn’t realize that all you were doing is running purposelessly in circles. You felt blessed.

As a child, infectious enthusiasm was all you had and that produced an honest reality of your own that you believed in with full conviction. You invented that reality daily, but truly lived and breathed in it, never doubting its authenticity. When you saw or heard a ghost story, you actually believed in it and felt a beautiful joy of encountering it. Myths and fantasies of distant lands (mostly from absurd TV shows for children) were real. These fables were as real as your naive belief that one lucky evening you will get stuck in a candy or chocolate shop all alone. Didn’t you believe that Superman existed, and may probably come to help if you were in trouble? Or that Teletubbies were somewhere there having fun when you were not around?

Oh, and don’t forget, you had dreams, too. At some point of your childhood, if you were a boy, most likely you wanted to become an astronaut or a fighter pilot. If you were a girl, you probably wanted to become a teacher. (No brownie points deducted if you wanted to become something else). Point is: you wanted to be someone, who in your reality had best possible life. A life which could give you immense joy, adventure and freedom.

But as you grow up, slowly your parents start chiseling your world-view. When you insist that Superman (or whoever your favorite hero was) is real, they would say: “No, child. He exists only in TV or movies”. At first, it is a shock to you, or even an abomination. You ignore your parents. But after a while, you start accepting their reality since it is coming from parents (and, that too, not from Joe’s parents but yours). As you grow up, these nitpicks transform your reality from “what you believe in” to “what you should believe in”. No longer becoming a pilot is good enough for you. Like all healthy grownups, you must aspire to become a lawyer, doctor or an engineer. You reluctantly agree because, after all, they’re your parents so they must know better.

Of course, parents’ point of view about reality helps children in many, many ways. If parents play a passive role in upbringing their children, world may be full of soon-to-be adults who actually believe in cartoonland. So, they should definitely discuss issues and topics with their children. They should encourage a healthy curiosity and a sense of wonderment. They should be proud if they are able to teach their children how to think independently and decide for themselves. Creating a man or woman who is able to think freely and stand for his beliefs should be a function of parents.

It is a disgrace, however, if parents take advantage of a child’s impressionable mind to engrave their views upon you. If they are Hindu, Muslim or Christian, why must you become the same? If you like being a rocket scientist, why must you give that up for their dreams?

Things really get complicated when you think you have grown up and suddenly find yourself disagreeing with your parents. Issue at hand could be about startups, ethics, morality, homosexuality, politics, fashion, religion or any other topic under sun. Many cultures (oriental ones like Chinese and Indian, especially) promote respecting parents and elders as de facto behavior. This cultural programming is well entrenched, so much so that people may start questioning and compromising their beliefs and aspirations, just because they may risk offending their parents.

These weaklings never give up their comfortable jobs for risky, adventurous life of an entrepreneur. They never question their faith or religion but accept it as a “given”. Or, in spite of their wishes, they impatiently marry or have kids. All this because parents (or relatives/elders/society, for that matter) say so. Worst part is that somehow they convince themselves that they’re wrong. (Maybe these self-lies are necessary to live such a fake life)

If you are not convinced of someone’s opinion, don’t you disagree with them? (Unless you are pussy who agrees with everyone lest someone gets offended). If you have no qualms about disagreeing with others, how should it make a difference if “others” in question is your parents?

As a child, you believed (or, perhaps it is wired in our genes) that parents are perfect creatures and you made heros of dad and mom. They were best ever, weren’t they? But, as you grow up, that ideal fantasy starts transforming into an imperfect reality. Much to your shock, you discover that parents are humans too. And like you, they share same psychological and sociological biases and flaws. They too have perspectives, and those perspectives may not be any better than yours.

I am no way arguing that you should (necessarily) disagree with parents (or elders). They definitely have more experience of world, so you should always give them an ear when they are telling their opinion. But unless we all live in a utopian society where everyone thinks alike, there would come a day when you may find yourself disagreeing with people older than you, people whose emotions (and reality) you don’t want to shatter, people you love. In such moments of self doubt, you can either condescend into a shameful agreement and live your life with constant reminders of self-betrayal. Or, you can stand for yourself and live a free, proud and honest life. Choice is yours.

I was recently thinking about what would a minimal, initial team for a software startup comprise of. Imagine you have a brilliant idea for a startup and you have some funds to hire an initial team. But like most smart entrepreneurs, you want to hire a minimal team first and only expand later, if and as needed. So, what would be the essential, minimum team for your startup? Of course, technically, the answer is one. Minimum number of people you need for your startup is you (and possibly a cofounder). But, I am more interested in exploring what functional roles need to be performed in an early startup that is just getting off the ground. You could be doing all roles yourself, or you could be having different people for these different roles, but in my opinion, following roles define an essential startup team:

• Content expert
• Analytics and marketing expert
• Designer
• Engineer

Update/note/disclaimer: As pointed out in comments, at extremely early stages, product/market fit is what you should be aiming at and for that matter “product manager” (which is founder in most cases) is the person who will test and refine the startup until that fit is achieved. The team I describe is relevant once you know you have discovered the right market and have a pretty good sense of what product is going to look like.

Let me describe these roles in details and comment on why I think these are absolutely essential for an early stage startup.

Content expert

What s/he does? This person owns every aspect of your startup related to content. Activities include: writing amazing posts on your blog; writing guest posts on prominent industry publications and blogs; copywriting for website and landing pages; managing and engaging community on Twitter, Facebook and other social media channels; engaging your startup online (by commenting on relevant blog posts, forums, Quora, etc.); writing whitepapers, case studies, etc. (if yours is a B2B startup). This person also interacts with the analytics expert to A/B test and refine headlines/copywriting and supplies content for email newsletters. Essentially, this person understands and gets what compelling content looks like and also understands why good content is so important to the startup’s success.

Why is content expert important? Content does two amazing things for a startup: a) it is super important for SEO purpose; more content you have on site and off-site, more likely are you to be ranked highly on search engines; b) good content helps your startup gets noticed. Companies like SEOMoz, Unbounce, Mint, OKCupid, etc. have shown what wonders good content can bring. With our product Visual Website Optimizer, I am trying to do the same by writing weekly posts on I love Split Testing blog. From my personal experience, I can tell content helped people notice our product as a serious A/B testing contender. Good content attracts much needed attention towards your startup and consistently good content helps create a nascent community around your startup. What more could you ask for?

Analytics and marketing expert

What s/he does?: This person is responsible for everything related to analytics (and marketing) in your startup. The list of what work needs to be performed is huge: properly utilizing Google Analytics to optimize funnels and understand where traffic is coming from, taking care of SEO, A/B testing different pages to maximize conversions, designing and implementing user engagement strategies (through email/retargeting/etc.), designing strategies to maximize retention of users/customers, increasing engagement on pages, doing PPC and display campaigns which show ROI; designing effective customer feedback loops. This person needs to work with content expert and designer to make killer landing pages and website structure. And s/he should also work with engineer to design retention strategies (trigger emails or badges or to implement any other novel strategy analytics expert may think of). Bottom line is this: analytics expert is responsible to maximize your conversions, sales and retention in any way s/he can.

Why is analytics expert important? In early days of startup, there is a risk of settling down towards a “good enough” framework. You have a website and you get a few signups daily, some of your users are canceling and you seem to have a vague understanding of what your users are doing on your website/app. All this process/information can quickly become de facto in your startup. As a startup, your team may be busy adding features, getting press and responding to customer queries. With all these day to day activities, analytics and optimization can take a back seat. Imagine how beneficial would it be for your startup, if your traffic increases from 10 hits to 1000 hits a day, conversion increases for 2% to 8% and churn reduces from 10% to 2%. Isn’t all this worth having a person doing the analytics and optimization job?

Designer

What s/he does? Obviously, this person is responsible for everything related to design. Tasks include: designing website, landing pages, application, email newsletters, banners, mobile app/website. Designer works with content expert to create visuals/images/infographics to be used in the content. S/he is also responsible for layout and visual appeal in whitepapers, case studies, etc. Designer works with analytics expert to create effective landing pages and call to action buttons. Designer works with engineer and analytics expert to skin the application and make it usable. A good designer intuitively understands the importance and impact of good design on how a startup is perceived.

Why is designer important? Needless to say, visitors and potential customers will judge quality of your product/service from design you have. In an era of design made popular by Apple and other companies, the bar for good design has really gone up. No longer can you hope to slap a basic HTML/CSS skeleton on your application and expect it to be received well. More than ever, design has become a significant competitive advantage and startups that realize this will be more successful than the rest.

Engineer

What s/he does? This person is responsible for technology and engineering behind your startup. Responsibilities are numerous: choosing frameworks, programming, server administration, maintaining databases, testing, QA, scaling operations, etc. The person should be smart enough to not over or under invest in engineering. Engineering and codebase evolves as startup evolves, so the person has to have a long term vision and give your technology an appropriate structure.

Why is engineer important? Initial choices you make in your engineering will have a long term effect on your startup. The programming languages you choose will define what kind of talent you attract. The framework you choose will guide direction of your code base. Choice of server architecture will become semi-permanent. The concept where your choice of technology/engineering effects your future decisions and efforts is called Technical Debt. So having a right engineer with good perspective on things is very important for a startup.

Bonus: customer support expert!

Technically, you don’t need a dedicated customer support person. In early days, it should be performed in rounds by everyone in the team. It helps the whole team be closer to the customer and understand (and hence fix) her problems and needs. However, if you really have to hire a fifth person in your team, I’d say hire a customer support expert. Keeping existing customers happy with swift and intelligent responses is sure shot way to differentiate from competition. Customers today are generally immensely unhappy with support of most (large) companies, so if you manage to surprise them with a good customer service, you may win much needed evangelists for your startup. In early days (and even now), this is precisely how we got people to love Visual Website Optimizer. We aim to provide absolutely the best customer support people may have seen.

Last week, I stumbled across a personal post from a founder on his thoughts after first month of his startup. He writes in the post that he hasn’t been satisfied with the traction received so far and wonders whether existing product is the right path to continue on. I had exact same questions when I was starting up Wingify and now that we have seen some traction, I thought I should expand on a comment I made on how to know if your startup idea is the right one.

When doing a startup, it is perfectly okay to wonder whether you are on the right track. It is not a sign of weakness. In fact, being too attached to one’s idea is a sure shot path to failure. Honest introspection into your startup should be done regularly to have a clearer perspective. After all, startup is a lot of effort and hard work. What good it is if you don’t know whether that effort is in the right direction?

Like many entrepreneurs in their initial stages, if you are feeling doubtful about your startup, ask these 3 questions to yourself (and your co-founder):

• Do you think what you are providing is creating significant value for anyone? Value should be so significant that people should curse you if you take that service away from them. Do you think it could happen?
• Do you think there is big enough market for the service AND the market is easy to reach (without spending bootloads of money)?
• Are you enjoying doing this? Do you see yourself doing this for several next years?

If answers to any of the questions is no, you better think hard about your startup before putting any more effort into it.

Providing value

As I wrote earlier, a lot of ideas are cool but they seldom provide value to anyone (and hence seldom make money). “Value” is not some abstract concept I am throwing around. Your product/service is valuable if a lot of people will become sad if it didn’t exist or if you take it away from them. Your idea has no value if nobody cares whether it exists or not. For example, you decide to open a cafeteria chain with iPad menus in college campuses. It is a cool idea, for sure. It may even get you on TechCrunch. But, frankly, would your target market bother if such an idea didn’t exist or if you open up one cafeteria and decide to shut it down? The campus crowd has other alternatives for cafeteria and that is why they won’t cringe when you shut it down. They would not bother with your cafeteria. An iPad menu isn’t a strong enough value to anyone.

But, on the other hand, if you decide to open a cafeteria (with or without iPad menu) in a remote locality where there are no cafeterias at all (and if they haven’t tasted coffee before), you are definitely providing significant value to a well defined market. And people will definitely curse you if you decide to shut it down for no reason.

So, as a startup founder, you must ask whether your product/service is providing real value to anyone. Value can be measured in terms of convenience provided, money saved, entertainment, time saved or other parameters. But litmus test for your idea should be this: if you decide to shut down your product/service for no reason, will people notice? Will people become sad/mad, or will they simply move on without much of a fuss? If your answer is no, you better move on.

Realistically reaching a big target market

Just providing value is not enough for a startup. You may have the most valuable idea of all time (like introducing coffee to a remote locality), but if your target market is small, hard to reach or non-existent, then you should think twice about that idea of yours. To give a simple example, if your idea is to open a fast food joint that also serves chilled Cola in middle of Sahara desert, it is indeed quite valuable. You will be guaranteed a customer, every time someone happens to be crossing the desert. But the point is, how many customers would you be able to serve? How big could such business get?

Another example is of a market that is big but incredibly hard to reach. For example, an English teaching course for low-income, less-educated people in countries like India, China, Russia, etc is a brilliant idea and I am sure such a market exists and is potentially huge. But reaching out to such a market is a marketing nightmare. You must be prepared to spend lot of money on TV, radio, newspaper campaigns and establish local centres across hundreds of cities. As a bootstrapped (or even VC-funded) startup, are you prepared and capable of taking such a challenge? If answer is no, you need to move on.

Are you enjoying this?

Startup is a big commitment in life, and choice of your startup idea will determine how maximum portion of your immediate life will be spent. It is true that generally people work on startup ideas they generally like, but there are market-based approaches to find ideas that can be profitable (but not necessarily in line with what you like). You must realize that next few years will be spent on the same startup idea, so you must enjoy doing it. If your startup is about health, you must enjoy being in that field. If it is about marketing, you must like marketing. If it is about bingo cards, you must be passionate about bingo cards. I’m not saying you have to be crazily in love with your industry/domain, but you must at least enjoy being part of the industry. Otherwise, if you do a startup just for money, you will quickly bore and burnout yourself. So, even if your startup can make you a billionaire but you don’t like it (or can’t imagine making yourself like it ever), don’t do it.

Summary

Your startup idea is worthwhile if it is: a) extremely valuable to target customers (and not merely cool); b) has a big enough market that you can realistically reach out to; and c) something you can immerse in for many, many years to come.

Otherwise, simply pivot or redo the idea. It is never too soon or too late to change paths in life.

I was fortunate to have been interviewed by Andrew on his awesome website Mixergy.com. The interview was about how we bootstrapped Visual Website Optimizer to over 1000 paying customers. The video is long (75+ minutes) but I hope if you watch it, you enjoy it! (If you rather prefer reading transcript, it is also available on Mixergy).

In a previous post, I wrote about what matters in life and what doesn’t. What I proposed was that these things don’t matter at all:

• Ego
• Material possessions

What matters instead is:

• New experiences
• Relationships

What if you have to choose between an experience or a relationship?

Such situations are always extremely hard. Imagine you need to go travel the world for a year but that means giving up (not fully investing) in a relationship (with friends, colleagues, spouse or parents). What would you do? Of course, there are many variables there but if you are really stuck at a decision, my recommendation is to pick a new experience over a relationship.

This may sound controversial to many but my reason for choosing a new experience over relationship is that experience is something which is entirely under your control. With relationship, there’s a second person involved whose behavior is something you cannot (and shouldn’t) predict and control. I’m playing Devil’s advocate here, and I understand that in many cases relationships indeed create richer lives. However, many relationships also go sour with or without any reason at all and there is little you can do about it. With new experiences, improving your life is completely up to you. You can choose to have new experiences on a regular basis and nobody would object to it. Level of control you have on new experiences is much more than that you have on relationships.

Ideal situation, of course, is to have both meaningful relationships and new, interesting experiences. However, in dire circumstances, if you have to pick just one, pick an experience since it is a more predictable (and easier) way to have a meaningful life.

My startup, Wingify, got covered in January 2012 edition of Inc. magazine. It tells about the journey from first version to final product (Visual Website Optimizer). Read the entire article below: