Inspiring Leaders and Great Advices

I have written about Advisors and my experience with them and the great people who helped me find the enterprenuer in me.

The more I think about it, I find humble leaders more inspiring. These are amazingly successful people who have achieved amazing feats but are very modest and well grounded.

My advisor Piyush Patel, sold his first startup Yago to Cabletron, became its CEO and scaled it and spun it into 4 public companies. He has taught me many business basics like focusing on your core team, setting goals for yourself and staying focused.

Desh Deshpande, serial enteprenuer, tech visionary and great startup metor is one such person. When I got started with my startup Coola ready to leave 10 years of Corporate management job, he helped me see where I stand in the middle of my career and my startup zeal. The best advice he gave is very useful for all enterprenuers getting started. Set a time limit and jump into raising money knowing you can go back to your job if you do not succeed. That way you are not dragging on in the early stages without getting started, also it will help you get out your best and get started in a timely fashion. I owe it to Desh's advice that I raised my first $1million Venture money on 40 days. As his advice, I set a 3 months limit to raise money and the first VC I contacted said, "you are so naive, even I want to signup today, the paperwork will take 3 months". That made me run like crazy to find a fast paced VC, meet 120 people, build my own draft Series A document and close in 40 days.


Jay Sidhu, currently CEO of Sovereign Bank is another such humble leader I admire. No, he was not my advisor at Coola but is someone I would like to meet.

Funding - Terminologies

A friend of mine was building a cap table for his first startup without knowing the term, so I thought its a good idea to link this glossory of terms from VC experts.