Blog
Words. Wisdom. Winners.
Ankur Warikoo
Restless | Efficient | Outgoing | Analytical | Curious
I can live with that! :)
What is risk?
Jumping off bridges is considered too risky. Yet some people do it for fun.
Quitting your job is considered too risky. Yet some people have achieved success because of it.
Taking a loan is considered too risky. Yet some people have created wealth by taking smart loans.
What you define as risk may not be risky for someone else.
The definiton of risk is determined by you. its not an absolute
Do ahead and define risk
in a way that doesn’t scare you!
Time > Money
20 years back I would travel 50km one way and spend an entire day to save Rs. 100 in textbooks and notebooks
15 years back I would stand in line for 2 hours to get a monthly pass made for my bus travel
10 years back I would spend an hour everyday cooking food to save money on eating out
5 years back I would visit 3 shops to get the best price on the laptop
Today
I buy my music on iTunes
I call for bids when I want to buy something
I would much rather pay people to get work done and free up my time
The above may seem as a sign of prosperity. Disguised within it is actually an increasing value for one’s time.
So many people despite growing in life haven’t increased the value of their own time. They take pride in placing the same constant value.
Society calls it being earthy.
They confuse it with humbleness.
If your time doesn’t have an increasing value – you are not creating value. You are merely redistributing it. Because you are “wasting” your time on something that will create much lesser value than it could otherwise.
Place a value to your time. And take it onto yourself to keep increasing it.
Change your league
Almost always our goals in life are outcomes
The house you always wanted
The car you desire
The trip you wish to go on
The startup funding
The 6 pack abs
Outcomes don’t happen on their own. Outcomes require an input variable.
How about changing your goals to the input variables – the process that will almost conclusively decide the outcome?
Saving to invest every month, and where
Reaching out to an investor every week
Working out everyday
And then – change your league.
Think of the impossible input variable. The uncomfortable one. The hard one. The one you are scared of. The one you always wished you could do but haven’t done till date
Saving even before you spend a penny
Reaching out to investors in the valley
Working out everyday and completely changing your diet
Because someone somewhere said something – which will always hold true!
Safe sucks
If you have always had enough money in your bank
If the car seat plastic is still on
If you have never ran to catch a bus
If you have never quit a job because you hated it
If you have never spoken to a big crowd
If you check all doors after you have shut down your car
If you have never danced in public
If you never gone on a vacation alone
If you have never challenged the status quo
If you chose company name over work profile
If you have posted anonymous
Then you have played safe
And nothing great was ever achieved by playing safe. You can’t win by playing safe. You stop living!
Safe sucks!
It’s big enough!
http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=KMQr5m7ENmQ
Move straight to 4:46
I would want to see this everyday of my life. And remind myself that the vision I work towards is always going to be orders of magnitude bigger than the tasks I conduct today.
Don’t question your days. Don’t size the vision
It’s big enough!
Failure is a state of mind
And I am so glad Seth Godin agrees
“Will I get in?” is not nearly as good a question as, “Is it worth trying?”
It’s so easy to talk ourselves into failure before it even shows up
My biggest win so far (and perhaps ever)….
Fortune India 40 Under 40 List!
This month has been particular generous on me.
Won the Promising Entrepreneur of 2013, awarded by Enterprise Asia
Got listed as part of the India’s 25 Hottest Young Executives (under 40) by Business Today
Would you call yourself an entrepreneur?
IIT Delhi student, at the entrepreneurship club speaker series.
Ofcourse yes! How else would I get invited to the entrepreneurship club!
:)
Who is an entrepreneur? Someone who starts on his own? Someone who owns sizable equity? The founder?
Well, technically yes. And technically, I wasn’t meant to run the marathon either. So fuck technical.
Here is my definition. Let’s see how it works
Anyone whose job is to work on systems already laid out by someone else – is not an entrepreneur. That’s managing.
The ones that build systems, challenge status quo, innovate and change things in order to always make them better and efficient – those are entrepreneurs
The first 100 odd people at Facebook are entrepreneurs.
Jonathan Ive is an entrepreneur
And so is Arvind Kejriwal
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