Mel Goldman has a central role to play in the origin of India’s now flourishing venture industry. In the late ‘80s, as the World Bank officer in charge of the Industrial Technology Development Project, he identified four local partner institutions (who thus became venture capital firms) for loans, earmarked for the specific purpose of these institutions providing venture capital in turn to innovative Indian ‘startups’. From this initiative, the seeds …
If you are a founder and get a pass from a VC who cites low TAM (Total Addressable Market) as a reason for passing, then be rest assured that in nine out of ten cases, that is not the real reason. The real …
Every other week, I get at least one, sometimes two, introductions or inbounds from senior corporate leaders wanting to ‘pick my brain’ around startups / venture, or wanting to have ‘open-ended conversations’. Not all of these are around exploring job opportunities, though about half are. The rest are split between offering advisory (to startups) and investing in them, or both.
I can understand the motivation for this. Startups are an …
284 pages; published 2023; read March 2024
TLDR: Bent Flyvbjerg is an expert on megaprojects and why most fail to finish on time and budget. Only 0.5% of megaprojects are under budget as well as on time, he says. In this book he covers the why, and how you can get these megaprojects done in time and under budget. Good, easy read with lots of interesting examples. As with all …
[This was written in late’21, and I had posted it as a Notion page. Now consolidating all of these reviews posted elsewhere into this site.]
Published 2015; 320 pages. Read Nov’21.
The Wright Brothers by David McCullough was easily amongst top 2-3 books I read in 2021. It is a terrific portrait of two obsessed inventors from a small town in USA who were able to achieve what many well-resourced …
[This was written in mid’21, and I had posted it as a Notion page. Now consolidating all of these reviews posted elsewhere into this site.]
Published 2021. 478 pages. Read Jun’21.
SPW stands for Sajith Pai’s words. These are my notes, comments, markups on the text.
SPW: Classic business narrative faction (my term for nonfiction) by one of the best Amazon-watchers out there. Brad Stone had written a previous book …
[This was written in early ’21, and I had posted it as a Notion page. Now consolidating all of these reviews posted elsewhere into this site.]
Published 2021. 286 pages. Read Mar’21.
The book is written by two (now ex) Amazon old-timers (one of whom was Jeff’s shadow!). It is a good delineation of the management principles + practices that distinguishes Amazon such as
[This was written in early ’20, and I had posted it as a Notion page. Now consolidating all of these reviews posted elsewhere into this site.]
2019, 273pgs, Read Feb’20.
The book looks at culture, what it means, and how to set it and sustain it. It does so through four historical examples and contrasts it with contemporary events and examples. The four historical examples are Toussaint Louverture’s slave …
[This was written in late ’20, and I had posted it as a Notion page. Now consolidating all of these reviews posted elsewhere into this site.]
Published 2020. 293 pages. Read Oct’20. If you see ‘SPW’, that stands for Sajith Pai’s Words, essentially my comments and marginalia.
The book describes the unique culture at Netflix, one that Reed Hastings (Netflix’s CEO and cofounder) says has been instrumental in its long-term …
[This was written in mid’22, and I had posted it as a Notion page. Now consolidating all of these reviews posted elsewhere into this site.]
Four Thousand Weeks is one of those self-help books that transcend its genre to become something more (Atomic Habits by James Clear is one another). In style and in spirit it reminded me of the writings of Alain de Botton, which occupy the intersection of …