Working from 'The Center for Agile Thinking' HQ!

The new year started with a big bang at both the Last-Bench! office in Mumbai and The Center for Agile Thinking office in US. The boys in Mumbai have been on a roll and continuously producing learning content. I'd like to share my experience working out of The Center for Agile Thinking HQ in Princeton, New Jersey.

Work as usual started from the 1st day of January. That I'd like to call #LifeOfAnEntrepreneur. Prof. Anne, Charlie and I started work with getting an agenda down first of what we wanted to accomplish over the next 4 days. We came up with a list of 9 items and we achieved 8 out of them, which was very exciting!

The day started out with coffee, went into discussions, ideations and brainstorming. We also got down to some real work which included content and technology. I got to meet a very interesting management consultant while I was there with whom we validated our product, idea and value proposition.

Charlie and I got our hands wet with some server issues, discussed wireframes, design and user-interface. Prof. Anne and I reviewed content for some of our offerings. We had our first virtual team meeting with Sajid and Venkat in India and I was here in the US. It felt a bit different but the feeling was good.

Our days started at around 8am and went on until 8-10pm but it never felt tiring or stressful. Intermittently, our conversations ranged from culture to experiences, which maintained the balance and equilibrium in our minds!:-) I learned Charlie is an awesome musician who also learnt from Pt. Ravi Shankar back during his college days. He played the Piano on one of the evenings as we all were relaxing and it was perfect! The music was relaxing and it got us energized. He played Jazz to Classic Rock. I didn't know a whole lot of Jazz but he played Eric Clapton, Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple and Billy Joel. What an experience to see him play the Piano!

Even on the last day, usually one would feel relaxed but we were on a roll and got a lot of work done on the final day too. With al the work, I was balancing calls and work back in India and tried in whatever little way I could to support the team in every possible manner which included communicating all our discussions here with Sajid and Venkat too.

Prof. Anne and Charlie were great hosts. For me, it felt like home and working from the office was the best start to the New Year!

Here are some pics:

Halfway through the 'Startup Leadership Program': Thoughts & Learnings

It was a couple months back when I heard about the Startup Leadership Program (http://www.startupleadership.com). I read about it, found it interesting and started reading more about how I could enroll. To my surprise, there was a selection process. This in a way was a roadblock because I was in no mood to write essays. Anyway, I thought about it deeper and somewhere I felt like this program would help me take my startup to a very different level so I took a stab at the essays and the admission form. With the daily grind, somewhere I forgot that I had applied. Finally, out of the blue I got a call and coordinator told me I got selected! Yippiee!! :-) I was really excited about this community!

As I write this blog, I'm somewhere in the middle of the entire 6 month program. The program has been very enlightening, eye-opening and a great learning experience. I've met some amazing and enthusiastic budding entrepreneurs, successful entrepreneurs and investors. Every session has so much to take away. We've covered topics on business plans, pitches, financial modeling, customer development, valuations, products, investments, lean methods, sales, customer development and many more exciting topics to come as we move ahead.

I got to meet with some very exciting entrepreneurs, Nischal from JustUnfollow, Sampad from Instamojo, Pravin from Wishberg, Kunal from Freecharge, Vikram from MyDentist, Mohit from Carwale, Sameer from CouponDunia, Vikram from yavvy.com and Bijaei from Loyalty Rewardz.

But I'd like to share my learnings till date and how I have implemented it within Last-Bench! One of our biggest strengths as a startup is that we have a strong, dependable and multi-talented team. It might not be large but it is a team whose strengths are diverse and individually each member, using their unique talent,  contributes to the business goals in a unified manner. One of our biggest weaknesses is the constant pivoting and loss of focus when trying to experiment with too many things.

As part of our lean method, the first thing we did was clearly identify the areas (product and services) we want to work on. We chose 1 product and 1 service that we wanted to focus on. This is helping us to be more focused and also allowing us to channel our energies in the right direction. Second, we've decided that each one manages his own time but wherever dependencies, that person is responsible to coordinate with the other people so that a bigger weekly goal is achieved. Third, we've started weekly targets that sum up to the bigger targets and everyone needs to report whether it is completed or not. There is no room to say that it is partially completed or 50-60% completed. If remaining, simply means it is not done. Fourth, we kept clear goals in terms of revenue and product development. Fifth, experimentation is key to find out whether a feature or a sales method will work for us or not. Sixth, there is no room for assumptions. Seventh and the most important, keep having fun while working!

Before and after every session I share the learnings with my team and everybody is excited to learn more. I personally think, a program like this, is definitely good for entrepreneurs who are in the 1st two years or to-be entrepreneurs. The biggest advantage that this program brings is the discipline!

Here are some pics from the sessions:

I will write more on this once the program ends and share my learning on each topic as we progress.

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Last-Bench! turns ONE...

Message from Rajeev:

I am truly excited as our startup turns one. I’d like to use this opportunity to quickly let you know what has transpired over the last one year and what you can expect from us in the future...