Memories, Cookaracha Guides or Venture number two…

Much before Reboot and the Blue Screen of Death, before the Alchemy discussion on our family dinner table and the wild dreamy bet that turned out to be Avicena, before blogging and before DesiBackToDesh, in a land far far away (then marked as Geocities in Jedi lore) there was once a venture named Cookaracha [...]

February 5, 2010  Tags: , , , , , , , ,   Posted in: Blue Screen, Columbia Business School, Desi Back to Desh, Desi Startup, Failure, Personal shit, Writing, entrepreneurs, new ventures, small business  One Comment

Glenn Hubbard, Reboot and me

I was a brash and ambitious desi with a business plan at Columbia. Glenn was part of the entrepreneurial faculty at the school. We met and exchanged notes on the sidelines of Amar Bhide’s chat about his upcoming book, “The origin and evolution of new businesses”. A few months later when I lost [...]

October 27, 2009  Tags: , , , , , ,   Posted in: Alchemy stuff  No Comments

The original Blue Screen of Death Launch post

A walk down memory lane, old backup drives and fossilized emails produced this mail shot from early 2006. How’s that for perspective?

At the business school orientation for new arrivals, a fellow student asked me why I was at Columbia. My response drew a look of confusion – “I always wanted to write a [...]

September 19, 2009  Tags: , , , , , , , ,   Posted in: Alchemy stuff  No Comments

Reboot on ITLOW and CIO WebStudio

Jehan does a very flattering post (all of it is true) and a great interview on the CIO webstudio covering the book. More pictures of the book (for you Mohtashim) and moa.

September 7, 2009  Tags: , , , , , , , ,   Posted in: Alchemy stuff  No Comments

Reboot. Advice from a failure

Hunting the great white shark deep in the barrier reef, bare handed, is not a common hobby. It is just as common as starting up organically, bootstrapping, working for yourself, and taking crazy risks not just with your life but with your entire family’s future.

Yet we all dream of it when fate brings [...]

September 7, 2009  Tags: , , , , ,   Posted in: Alchemy stuff  No Comments

Things they never taught me at Columbia Business School…

Despite my numerous comments about how much I owe Bruce Greenwald, Mark Broadie, Don Sexton and Ralph Biggadike on this blog, there are a few thing that they didn’t get around to covering in my all too short stay in school. Here is my list

The link between dropping kids to school and closing deals [...]

September 24, 2008  Tags: , , , , ,   Posted in: Columbia Business School, Desi Startup, Failure, Startup, Uncategorized, entrepreneurs, new ventures, small business  No Comments