Paras Chopra, Author at Inverted Passion

Startups thrive under uncertainty (of the right kind)

February 25, 2022February 25, 2022Paras ChopraEntrepreneurship, Mental Models

1/ Do you know how big companies make decisions? They build scenarios and models on spreadsheets.

They do this because often the decision maker’s job is at stake, so all substantial decisions by that person require justification which is often to be had from numbers.

2/ It’s a myth that big companies don’t take risks. Introducing new products is risky and so is expanding into new geographies. In fact, all decisions are risky in a way. (If they weren’t, no decision is required as it’s simply obvious to all). ... Read the entire post →

Get press by giving journalists something surprising

February 20, 2022February 20, 2022Paras ChopraMental Models

Journalists don’t get excited about new products and features the same way an entrepreneur gets.

This is because:

First, a journalist gets hundreds of pitches every day and a particular product launch announcement is no different than the many hundreds of launch announcements sitting her inbox.
Second, aliens visiting Earth is news but your product’s new feature is certainly not news.

News is something that caters to basic human curiosity about the new and surprising. There is a reason why one death in a tragic car accident gets covered as news but thousands of deaths every day due to preventable diseases in poor countries don’t make it into the news. The former is surprising. People want to know how that particular accident happened. The latter is a statistic, a daily occurrence that people are familiar with and after a while becomes pretty boring to read. ... Read the entire post →

Your 30 second pitch shouldn’t be about you

February 5, 2022February 7, 2022Paras ChopraMental Models

Entrepreneurs generally confuse their 30 second pitch as something that needs to be about what they’re doing. This interpretation is understandable because usually anyone they meet ends up asking them what they do and the entrepreneur faithfully launches into her pitch.

Unfortunately, such a pitch often ends up with the listener quickly losing interest.

This is because even though people ask what you do with good intentions, they usually do not actually deeply care about what you do. What people care about is themselves, which suggests that a pitch should start and end with them and revolve around the world they live in. ... Read the entire post →

Notes from the book: “The Spike”

January 31, 2022January 31, 2022Paras ChopraNotes and Summaries

Recently finished “The Spike: An Epic Journey Through The Brain in 2.1 Seconds” by Mark Humphries and here are my notes from it.

1/ As the book’s subtitle suggests, it’s about the neural code our brain uses for doing what it does.

The book is rich with details and I learned a lot of new facts and ideas about the brain. I highly recommend the book to anyone who has an interest in neuroscience.

2/ Since writing about an object as complex as the brain can fill encyclopedias, I will focus my notes on what I know now that I didn’t know before reading the book. ... Read the entire post →

Consumers want stuff for free, companies want to pay

January 22, 2022January 24, 2022Paras ChopraMental Models

Mark Zuckerberg famously said that there’s no point in monetizing a consumer product unless you have a billion users. Consumers are habituated to getting digital services for free. This makes monetization for consumer products very tricky. Try recalling all the digital products or services you pay for as a consumer. In all likelihood, there won’t be too many as increasingly music, news, movies, productivity apps, and games are all free.

*What you should be charging depends on who you’re selling to*

Businesses, on the other hand, prefer paying. For consumers, their salary is a cap on how much they can earn, so they can’t increase their monthly costs indefinitely. However, for a business, if an additional cost helps them grow their revenue and profits, they will happily pay for it. So, businesses are used to buying expensive stuff if they see returns from it. ... Read the entire post →

It’s winners-take-all in B2C, while B2B is a long tail

January 16, 2022January 17, 2022Paras ChopraMental Models

There are only a few dominant social networks because consumer markets are prone to winner-take-all effects. There are multiple reasons for this.

*There are many more CRM companies than there are social networks*

First, consumers want stuff for free or cheap which drives consumer companies to expand aggressively so that they can amortize their fixed costs over many such users.

Second, consumers want to conform with other consumers so inherent virality in products gets built-in. Once, a minimum threshold of consumers adopt a product, this word-of-mouth virality ensures the product becomes an obvious choice for the remainder of consumers left in the market. If you have Uber that all your friends are using and it has all the drivers in your city, why would you try something else? ... Read the entire post →

How my 2021 went

January 6, 2022January 6, 2022Paras ChopraNotes and Summaries, Personal, Reading Recap

At the closing of the last decade, I reviewed the intellectual progress I had in 2010s. Then I reflected upon the year 2020 by writing 20 lessons I learned in that year. Such reflections haven’t been part of any process – I’ve simply enjoyed taking a pause and doing stock of where my time went. Since time is the only limited resource we have, as I’m aging, I’m realizing that being conscious of how it’s getting spent is extremely important. In fact, such reflections are a fantastic way to nudge your future into a direction that you intentionally choose (v/s reacting to circumstances and drifting from year to year). ... Read the entire post →

Why we don’t have a science of consciousness yet

January 4, 2022January 5, 2022Paras ChopraBiology, Physics, Technology

Neurons were first extensively illustrated by Cajal in ~1890. When he looked at a tissue of the brain, here’s what he painted:

At that point in time, we didn’t know that galaxies other than the Milky Way existed. We didn’t even know that atoms consisted of electrons and protons.

Fast forward to today. We now know that our galaxy is simply one of the 100 billion galaxies out there. We have not only discovered protons but now know that they aren’t even fundamental particles, quarks are. We’ve imaged black holes, detected gravitational waves. We have an accurate account of the universe’s origin starting from the very first moments. In short, we’ve pretty much nailed our understanding of the physical universe since the time Cajal first looked at the brain. ... Read the entire post →

Consumers hate getting sold to, companies love it

December 19, 2021December 21, 2021Paras ChopraMental Models

Many failed B2C products might have worked out if consumers had the patience to understand what the product might do for them. But consumers are impatient and if the value is not delivered immediately and continuously, they stop engaging and abandon the product that could have been valuable later.

History is filled with complex gadgets with thick user guides that have failed spectacularly.

*B2B companies are dominated by salespeople while B2C companies are dominated by product and design people.*

In contrast, for B2B products, the customer is habitual to getting sold. In fact, they prefer a sales process where a human explains to them the benefits and costs of the product. This preference to being sold allows an entrepreneur to communicate the total benefit of her product in a way that’s impossible to do in the B2C world. ... Read the entire post →

Consumers want to conform, companies want to differentiate

December 4, 2021December 6, 2021Paras ChopraMental Models

Most consumers at any given moment are more or less satisfied with what they have. Since we’re creatures of habit, we tend to go to the same restaurants that we like, buy the same stuff as we’ve always done and live our days without significant deviations. We’re less exploratory than we’d like to think.

This is because there’s a cost of change. Whenever we are trying a new product, we’re incurring a cost (of effort, time, or money). And, we go to great lengths for avoiding these costs. ... Read the entire post →