Jiah Khan suicide, sympathy and all that

One should not speak without sympathy for the suicide-committer and all that. And honestly, I am not against any outpouring of grief. People have sympathy to spare, let them distribute it however they please. But this whole Ms Jiah Khan brouhaha is making a mockery of the idea of a sense of perspective.

Watched some bits of random TV yesterday where some great anchor was saying that this latest episode was again clearly telling us how tough an industry Bollywood is. I nearly fell off my chair laughing. Lets be honest here, if alpha from Chennai had been a jilted lover who commits suicide, its newsprint for 2 days tops. Just because this dame is from Bollywood, these anchors should not talk nonsense. And this Jiah Khan issue crossed nonsense some time ago.

There are hajaar farmers who commit suicide every year, but we never hear that 'agriculture is a tough industry to be in'. Bus drivers, vegetable cart-pullers, the vast humanity of India employed in the unorganized sector take serious risk with every day aspects of their life that most of us white-collar types cannot even begin to appreciate. I do not want to sound like a shrill left-winger, but this fetish for sympathising with famous people is becoming indecent. First we had the Sanjay Dutt-has-been-a-model-citizen bulcr*p. Now, it  is poor heroines of Bollywood.

Bollywood is a winner-take-all industry. Winner-take-all industries are tough. Winner-take-all industries generate lots of losers. If you cannot take that, you should have not chosen the industry. It is ok to sympathize with the losers. It grates when people begin sympathizing for the winners. "Poor Shah Rukh Khan, what kind of pressure he must be under" just sounds indecent.

Jiah Khan, may she rest in peace. And be a lesson for all dames who are willing to fall head over heels in love with despicable characters. But thats about it really. Women have done this for long, and will probably do it for much longer.        

Nash Equilibrium and Tipping Point

Nash Equilibrium is one of those juicy ideas that sticks in one's mind. It can be explained wonderfully with  simple examples, and it holds the promise of even working in very complex scenarios.  One possible extension to the idea of Nash equilibrium is the idea of adding a probabilistic basis to decision-making. As in, for the famous prisoner's dilemma question, what if each prisoner evaluated his decision after attaching a vague probabilistic metric to the other prisoner prizing loyalty over a beggar-thy-neighbour policy? That could be fun.

I must warn that there is no academic basis to this line of thought. Random pontification was never inhibited by mere lack of academic basis. So, here goes.

In the prisoners' dilemma game, prisoners are expected to base their response on how the fellow-prisoner has taken his/her previous decisions. So, arguably if we allowed for this kind of scenario where everyone takes decisions based on how others have done, we approach a pseudo-intellectual basis for the other popular idea - a tipping point. Somehow loyalty begets loyalty, self-interest begets self-interest. And beyond a point, exception becomes norm and vice versa.

From society's point of view, it is in the overall interest that the Nash equilibrium be avoided, as it is collectively sub-optimal. However, if individuals reach a level where they worry only about themselves, we would inevitably land at the Nash equilibrium. the momentum for the tipping point can be either way. So, society has to perhaps create levers that give momentum for the trend away from the Nash Equilibrium.

Let us take a simple example to see the basis for this. In Chennai, at every traffic signal, we have what I am going to refer to as the ungentle-creep. When a signal reads red, all vehicles start behind the stop line. But, slowly, inexorably, all vehicles start inching up every second until they finally reach a point where they severely constrict the flow of traffic for the lanes that currently have the green-signal. There is a belief that if this inching-up is not done,  the lane that currently has green signal will have a bunch of guys squeezing through even after 'their' green turns to red (because they can). So, in order to defend a narrower set of interests, everyone has to opt for the collective sub-optimal solution.

The traffic in Chennai has reached this blissful Nash equilibrium at many levels.

Perhaps a great time for an external agency to provide an incentive for the system to go towards the other tipping point. Not likely in my lifetime. :-)

AC rooms and OC (free) Coffees

A few conversations, dialogues from movies and anecdotes just stick in the mind. For me, this is one such. Apparently, my boss's ex-colleague (let us call him Mr. X) had started his business a decade or so ago and was going through the grind of setting up a company. In the early days, one of X's well-meaning friends had a telephonic conversation with Mr. X regarding various business plans. In his infinite wisdom, said friend had given some advice/gyaan/inputs/ideas on running the business, reacting to which Mr. X apparently lost his cool and said "AC room-la OC coffee kudikara ___ laam advice kudukaraanga." (Dudes sitting in AC rooms and sipping free coffees have taken it upon themselves to provide guidance)

Awesome stuff. And so apt.

A great many people do not understand the travails of the entrepreneur  And so friends, I have tried to outline a few points about entrepreneurs that one should know before talking to them. Most of these are based on my interactions with entrepreneurs and my own mini-stint as a quasi-entrepreneur.

1. Entrepreneurs are less receptive to new ideas: Entrepreneurs will be incredibly patient with taxmen, might positively grovel before their auditors, and might be really accommodating of requests from other government servants. At the same time, or perhaps because they take so much cr*p from these sources, they will be less responsive to your genius recommendations. Not because they are really that busy, but your genius recommendations are usually cr*p. Please remember this.

2. Entrepreneurs have giant egos: If you do not understand this, you are in trouble. All other things being equal, most entrepreneurs will accept it if you say you have bigger brains than them; but purely by dint of having started a business on his/her own, every entrepreneur believes he/she has something employees can never claim to have - Cojones (described with a word describing spherical object more colloquially). Key take-away from this. Never, never talk to an entrepreneur about risk, risk appetite, risky venture, etc. if you are among the salaried class.

Now, moving on to what phrases/conversation strands you should avoid while talking to entrepreneurs.

1. What is the end game in this business?: Only someone bred in AC rooms and OC coffees can ask some entrepreneur this. The business survives through the bad weeks, inches forward in the good weeks,  and improves largely based on incrementalism, a concept alien to "big idea" guys. Should it survive a couple of cycles and should the entrepreneur want to bank it, he/she will then speak your language. But the same pseudo-intellectual babble that can make you look the big-picture guy in investment offices will classify you as exhibit A in entreprenuer-land.

2. Reverse engineering a firm's revenues: What is your turnover? is an ok question. Ask it if you must. But if you do not have the cojones to ask that, don't do the other thing.

How many units do you sell? What are your per-unit revenues, per-unit variable costs and overall fixed costs might all seem like great questions, especially spaced over a 30-minute conversation. But if you do this, you are just taking a short-cut to the place ear-marked exhibit-B in the clueless-ness fair. When you are smooth-talking your way into the numbers, and crediting yourself for your guile and back-of-the-envelope genius, the entrepreneur's inner voice is screaming "Give up on this guy"

3. Are you guys thinking of raising capital?: This is a big no. Unless you can cough up $10m+ no questions asked before the entrepreneur moans "Oh, oooh Yes", you do not ask this question. No, it does not matter if you have worn a tie to office for 10 years in a row now. You still cannot ask that question. Especially if the entrepreneur's business has NO requirement for capital.

Work-life balance, recruitment plan, and other such strategic gems are to be avoided as well.

I read this somewhere about new businesses - New businesses suffer from gluttony of ideas, than a starvation of them. There have been few truer statements. Entrepreneurs agonize over their ventures. They probably shoot down 15 ideas a day because they want to focus on the 3 they have going.

If you can take up a small part of the execution component of the strategy and take some cr*p out of a friend's lap, chip in. If a friend says he wants to shoot the breeze and discuss things about business be a listening board. Do not try to live down your inability to quit the boring job by being an uninvited board member.