Inverted Passion

Be passionate about the territory, not the map

All posts in Personal

So, you have a million dollars. Now what?

Posted on Author Paras ChopraPosted in Entrepreneurship, Personal, Philosophy13 Replies

Suppose you win a lottery or get a successful exit for your startup. You suddenly find yourself with a million dollars to play with. It is like what you always dreamt for has become a reality. At this point, what would you do? What would your future look like?

It is hard to imagine not having fun with a million dollars in bank. But that is precisely what I (sadly) concluded after thinking deeply over this issue. There are multiple reasons why I think a million dollars won’t bring me the freedom, happiness and euphoria that I had thought were main motivators for me.  ...  Read the entire post →

Luck, Randomness and Success

Posted on Author Paras ChopraPosted in Personal, Philosophy5 Replies

Is success random? How important do you think luck is for achieving success? Now, you may be a self-hero, a believer in hard-work-brings-success philosophy; every morning you may look forward to reading stories of successful people who were certain of their successes from the start. To achieve success, you may even be sufficiently motivated to learn new skills, network madly, and work endlessly. After all, if you do all the things right, success will kiss you. See, you are feeling great already! Now that you are all set to achieve success, let us sit in a time machine and head forward three years in future.  ...  Read the entire post →

Wonders of Probability

Posted on Author Paras ChopraPosted in Personal, Philosophy13 Replies

Lately, I have been reading a lot about Probability, Statistics and Machine Learning. These subjects always involve a kind of awe that one can only experience on understanding the concepts. I’ve developed tremendous respect for the people who understand probability, (Bayesian) statistics, learning theory and other related subjects.

I write this post to pose some probability (pseudo) paradoxes and problems to you. Even though these paradoxes are extremely simple to understand and comprehend, but their solution is completely counter-intuitive. I’ll admit that for some of the paradoxes/problems, even after seeing the solution I wasn’t able to figure out what exactly is going on. So, without further blabber here we go with the paradoxes: ...  Read the entire post →

Golden Rule for Startups

Posted on Author Paras ChopraPosted in Entrepreneurship, Personal4 Replies

If you are like most of the entrepreneurs, you want to find a business idea which can change the world and make you a famous millionaire. Plus you want an idea which is not hard to execute so that you may have best of all worlds. There is nothing wrong with this thought, except that either it is impossible or you need heavy doses of luck to make it a reality.

Easy to start and execute businesses rarely make it big. If you are thinking of writing an application which will revolutionize the web overnight, forget it. If you are thinking of coming up with a business model which will rock the world and make you arrive on the scene instantly, forget it. ...  Read the entire post →

Greatest Living Thinkers Today

Posted on Author Paras ChopraPosted in Personal, Philosophy11 Replies

In no particular order, following are the people whom I consider greatest living thinkers today. These are the people who are trying to pioneer a paradigm shift in our thinking exactly the same way Einstein, Leonardo Vinci and other people did in their respective times. You will definitely find worthwhile to read about the (works of) following thinkers:

Nassim Nicholas Taleb: debunking economists and their arrogance Richard Dawkins: pro-evolution and anti-religion

Paul Graham ...  Read the entire post →

BarCamp at IIT-Delhi, India on 11-12 October 2008

Posted on Author Paras ChopraPosted in Personal, Technology1 Reply

I am happy to invite you to the fifth avatar of BarCampDelhi, which will be held at IIT-Delhi on 11th and 12th October. With 100+ registrations already, the event is set to be super-exciting this time.

For those of you who do not know what BarCamps are all about, check this wikipedia entry. Barcamps are mainly user generated events with no fixed agenda. All the attendees are invited to participate in the talks and whoever wants to voice his opinion on anything, he can. As the word goes around, “BarCamp is an event where no one is barred from speaking.” [Courtesy: Prashant Singh] ...  Read the entire post →

Vote for my Startup Kroomsa: Music for Help

Posted on Author Paras ChopraPosted in Entrepreneurship, Personal

I’ve been nominated for the TATA NEN Hottest Startups awards. Brought to you by National Entrepreneurship Network and TATA Group, in association with Helion, Mint, Seedfund and Wadhwani Foundation, it is India’s only community-chosen awards for Indian start-ups.

Vote for my startup Kroomsa (http://kroomsa.com/) online at NEN Hottest Startups or via sms by smsing HOT71 to 56767 (Indian numbers only!)

Looking forward to your support.

How to Start an Online Business

Posted on Author Paras ChopraPosted in Entrepreneurship, Personal2 Replies

I am releasing the guide titled ‘How to Start an Online Business: 11,520 Free Resources for the Internet Entrepreneur‘ for free.

This 40 page guide is a massive (11,520 to be precise) compilation of free to access resources on how to start an online business. These internet resources take the form of tips, tricks, tools, techniques, advice, tutorials, tests, blog posts, articles and guides.

The guide takes you through different phases of starting an online business, right from generating a business idea to implementing and marketing it and later growing your business. To best of my author’s knowledge, no other guide contains such a huge list of resources and is so comprehensive that everyone (from newbies to professionals) is going to find something useful in it. ...  Read the entire post →