Paras Chopra, Author at Inverted Passion

Reading Recap #2: Basics of Ethereum and mental models for blockchain

February 3, 2018February 11, 2018Paras ChopraEconomics, Reading Recap

After my first weekly reading recap on basics of bitcoin and blockchain, I couldn’t post a recap last week as I was away attending my weekly class of Stanford’s Seed program in India for growth stage entrepreneurs.

My favorite part of the week was the design thinking class where various teams (of 4-5 people) had to interview people, discover a problem, brainstorm, prototype and test potential solutions — all within one day. The team I was part of went to autorickshaw stands and had detailed conversations with drivers about their lives, hopes, regrets, likes and dislikes. My biggest learning (and shock) was about their idle time: auto drivers don’t do anything for 90%-95% of their workday and so are unable to meet their ends meet (earning only Rs 200-600/USD 4-10 per day). We discovered lots of economic inefficiencies that are waiting to be fixed by an entrepreneur. I recommend you see my entire Twitter thread with detailed data and observations. ... Read the entire post →

Cryptocurrencies are belief systems

January 24, 2018January 25, 2018Paras ChopraEconomics

Making fun of hundreds of new cryptocurrencies launching every month is understandable. People are confused by all diversity of cryptocurrencies (bitcoin, litecoin, ethereum, ripple, etc.) because historically there was never a competition among currencies. All we’ve ever known or used in our lives is just one currency: the one the government issues. Imagine telling someone who had grown up reading the New York Times in the early 1990s that in less than two decades there will be hundreds and thousands of publications covering the city. He would have laughed at you. Today, the same person would be consuming news on Twitter or discovering new restaurants on Yelp, and catching up on celeb-gossip on Instagram. ... Read the entire post →

Meta mental model

January 23, 2018January 24, 2018Paras ChopraPsychology

Mental models are shortcuts that help you think better. One of the most famous ones is Pareto’s principle which says that for many phenomena, 80% of effects come from 20% of inputs. Management consultants love mental models: BCG matrix helps you with manage a portfolio of businesses, Porter’s five forces model helps you think about competition and Peter Principle helps you understand why organizations become full of incompetent managers.

Mental models are abstractions of reality. They’re like proverbs. For example, “Actions speaks louder than words” tells us that revealed preferences carry more information than stated preferences (something economists now take for granted). It’s a fun exercise to go through popular proverbs and decide if these old mental models are still useful in our interactions in the modern world. ... Read the entire post →

Reading Recap #1: Basics of bitcoin and blockchain

January 21, 2018February 11, 2018Paras ChopraReading Recap

From this post onwards, I’m starting a weekly recap of insightful articles and videos that I come across. This recap serves two purposes: a) curate and filter only the most insightful articles for readers of this blog; b) improve my mental models by reflecting on what I read recently. I intend to do this recap every week, so if you’re interested in reading along with me, subscribe to the mailing list.

The inaugural weekly recap (this one!) is mostly going to be about blockchains and bitcoins. What I find fascinating about the cryptocurrency mania is that perhaps the biggest current phenomenon that’s begging to be analyzed. Previously I covered how fidget spinners became all rage, how Facebook beat Friendster and how Singapore rose into dominance. All those were historical phenomena but bitcoins is what’s happening right now. ... Read the entire post →

Speaking your mind is a public service

January 19, 2018Paras ChopraPsychology

There’s a famous joke (that I discovered on Scott Aaronson’s blog). It goes something like this:

There’s a man standing in the Moscow train station, handing out leaflets to everyone who passes by. Eventually, of course, the KGB arrests him—but they discover to their surprise that the leaflets are just blank pieces of paper. “What’s the meaning of this?” they demand. “What is there to write?” replies the man. “It’s so obvious!”.

This joke gives a chuckle because without saying anything it points out how bad the living conditions were in the Soviet and how everyone knew that the conditions were bad. Yet, the Soviet Union remained in power from 1922 to 1991. How did it last so long when the public knew that central planning was devoiding them of progress? Surely, the large population (that included soldiers in the army) could have revolted against a few leaders. ... Read the entire post →

What fidget spinners teach about making hit products

January 17, 2018January 18, 2018Paras ChopraBusiness, Systems

Chances are that you know what fidget spinners are. I’m willing to take the risk of not linking to its Wikipedia page because I know almost everyone on the Internet either had one or seen one. (I had two!)

If you are a regular reader of InvertedPassion, you would know that I like going into rabbit holes. Previously, I wrote about Singapore’s foundation and lessons for entrepreneurs and also analyzed reasons for Facebook’s adoption in 2004 despite Myspace and Friendster having millions of users then. In this article, I’m spinning my way (no fun intended) into learning what made these little toys a global phenomenon and what entrepreneurs can learn to make their products grow like wildfire. ... Read the entire post →

Deconstructing startup decks: Spext (Google Docs for voice data)

January 15, 2018January 15, 2018Paras ChopraBusiness

I had tweeted about my willingness to give thoughts and feedback on a startup’s deck. Anup from Spext reached out to me with their deck. I’m deconstructing it below and after that, I’ll answer questions that Spext specifically wanted me to focus on. Note that my understanding of the market is limited to a few hours I spent doing the analysis. This deck is published with Anup’s permission.

The offer for analyzing decks still holds, in case you are interested, email me your deck. ... Read the entire post →

Why startups need to be cult-like

January 13, 2018Paras ChopraBusiness, Psychology

Peter Thiel wrote in his book, Zero to One, that startups need to be cult-like. At that time, I didn’t completely appreciate his message, but now I do. By ‘cult’, I mean a group where members have values that are similar to each other, but extremely different from the outside world. Cults, as long as they don’t harm their members or others, are society’s exploration vessels. Because they’re cults, they obsess about arcane stuff that nobody else cares about. Most of the times, they keep it to themselves and rest of the world ignores them. But if they discover something valuable, rest of the world benefits. ... Read the entire post →

Why many B2C startups pivot to B2B

January 9, 2018January 10, 2018Paras ChopraBusiness

In my conversations with other entrepreneurs, I’ve come across tens of startups that started with a B2C angle but eventually succeed as a B2B company. Outside of my experience, famous examples include Slack that started as a gaming company. VWO’s competitor, Optimizely, started as a company that made math teaching apps for children. In my experience, it’s far more common to pivot from B2C to B2B than the reverse. Why does that happen?

On Inverted Passion, I love to get into the details of the structure of success and analyze things beyond surface level impressions. So here are all the reasons why B2B proves to be a better option after failure in B2C. ... Read the entire post →

Staying relevant in a changing world

January 8, 2018Paras ChopraBusiness, Economics, Psychology

Many designers I know started their design practice by first practicing on Photoshop. Almost all marketers I know entered the field by reading articles on content marketing, Adwords, or Facebook Ads (SEO is long gone). Engineers in my day started learning web programming with PHP (apparently these days it’s Javascript / NodeJS).

Most self-made professionals get attracted to the methods and tools because they get immediate results. Want to do content marketing? Sign up on Medium, write an article and spread it. Want to write your first app? Use Bootstrap in the frontend and Mongo/NodeJS on the backend, and you’re up and ready in a couple of hours. Tools enable immediate gratification and that’s what makes them so attractive. ... Read the entire post →