No room for half-heartedness

I recently wrote a piece for MINT on my journey as an entrepreneur and my lessons from it. Reproducing it here, and in the process restarting this blog. Time will tell, if I can keep this up. — Access to good healthcare is critical. India’s National Health Policy draft 2015 intends to make it a fundamental right, yet millions in India and billions around the world struggle for this every day. Even those with access have a frustratingly poor experience. In a world where one can book seats in a theatre or a cab literally at the speed of thought, finding doctors is unbelievably tough. Healthcare records management are a pain too—you either don’t get them or if you do, you have to maintain fat files and often doctors won’t have the time to go through all your reports, severely compromising the quality of healthcare you receive.

330 days later, I am back on Facebook

September 10, 2010 – I quit Facebook.

August 7, 2011 – I rejoin Facebook.

Here are the reasons I quit and why I am back:

1. Felt Facebook was having a negative impact on the world  – Read the ‘Facebook Effect’. Understood the brilliant vision behind it and now I support it.

2. Didnt like the most of the posts / people on Facebook. Could not relate to them and their actions – Going to use groups and keep the content relevant.

3. Wasted a lot of time and energy on Facebook. Was a major distraction. – Need to use the positives and enforce self control.

4. Most of my chatter and sharing happens on twitter and felt my social group would soon follow me there. But that didnt happen and once I quit Facebook, I could no longer reach out to them.

Not sure how long my second stint on Facebook will last but what’s important is to be true to today’s thoughts, reasons and circumstance.

A Morpheus portfolio company’s feedback

“With due respect to the Morpheus guys but I have never seen a single post from any of the ex-morpheus companies detailing how it helped (or not helped them). Because of this I just dont know what value they bring to table” – sushrutbidwai

“I was just thinking that we should get some Morpheus guys to post a short testimony here. You know, as we are the Indian Entrepreneur Community, they must be interested” – rick_2047

These are 2 comments on a recent post – “Morpheus’s Batch 6 – Startup Acceleration Program Application is now open!”, on Hackerstreet.

Yes, that’s a fair enough argument. So this is me, Shashank ND from Practo.com, Morpheus Batch 3 (July 2009) sharing my thoughts on how we are benefiting from being part of the Morpheus Portfolio Companies :

How the government is killing Indian startups

Some of the recent moves by the Indian Government & its associated Institutions are hurting Indian Startups real bad.

Here’s how –

1. No Automatic Online Payments, thanks to ‘3D Secure’- RBI says, “We will not allow businesses to charge credit cards automatically, even if the credit card holder authorizes such a permission. Each time a transaction is done, a manual intervention by the card holder is necessary.” This is DUMB. This prevents companies from billing a customer on regular intervals automatically. This is inconvenient for the users and kills SaaS companies.

10 Changes

1. Stopped buying / reading newspaper and magazines. Dependent on web
Reason : Stale news, editorial content

2. Quit Facebook
Reason : Irrelevant information, time & focus sink

3. Decreasing use of Google Reader. Dependent on Twitter as a replacement
Reason : Better content at faster pace

4. Started a blog in 2010. Focused on startups, web, technology
Reason : Brings clarity to thoughts

5. Stopped using Read it Later. All articles read on Instapaper. Period
Reason : Simple wins. Always

6.  Started reading fiction. ‘Atlas shrugged’ was the first one.
Reason : Common Sense

7. Zero dependency on the local system. Information is online. OS, drivers, setup files on ext hdd and online
Reason : Local is lost. Need Web OS

8. 99% of all bills / expenses paid online  (Damn Maharashtra Electricity Board)
Reason : Netbanking makes running a company 80% easier

9. iPhone, my best investment ever
Reason : Trust only technology companies – Apple, Amazon, Google

10. All my offline applications are internet based
Reason : Refer reason 7 (More of a filler point)