Author: Murali
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Creating a world of ones’ own, starting with the pinewood derby
Several years back I heard some of my colleagues talk about Derby cars. Coming from India where I did not know anything about these Derby cars; it was all new to me. I was busy and did not know dig into this either. Wind forward twenty years … and now I have a 1st grader who is in…
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Jobs at Startups -or- in smaller companies
News media is ripe with positive stories about winning startups. Over the years we heard about many successful startup companies that have grown and flourished. If you are working at an enterprise, it likely started life as a small company sometime in the past. The nice thing about startups are that they are filled with…
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Venturing into capital?
Recently one of my relative expressed interest to be in investment banking or venture capital. I was impressed that in his early 20s she has conviction to enter the world of venturing. I was also intrigued if she had sufficient understanding the job. She claimed that she had done well in math, accounting, and business, during the college years.…
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All play may be good! check out the book : Wonderland
Over the holidays I got to read this excellent book by Steven Johnson titled Wonderland: How Play Made the Modern World. Steven is a prolific researcher, author, and story teller. In 2015, we watched his show How we got to now on PBS. Ever since I am a big fan of Steven. His research uncovers centuries of…
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Economics of Electric Vehicles – are these viable?
Yesterday I read this update on Tesla Supercharger Program. The promise of electric vehicles included low or no costs paid for gasoline, and limited or no emissions. Hence electric cars like Tesla promise high savings to pocketbook and the environment. Of course this comes with a high upfront cost to purchase these vehicles. On further investigation and looking…
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Pursuit of Perfection – Design, Architecture, and Re-architecture in the world of software
Excellence is a Journey. Perection is the destination. Often we have deep discussions about the desire to pursue perfection. An engineer walks up and says “I really do not like these shortcuts, I have this full design and I want to implement it.” The leader responds, “Yes, I understand. How long will it take to implement…
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Startup Decks and selling Stories – lessons from Zuora
Every startup faces the problem of explaining themselves to the investors and customers alike. Startups live at the edge of uncertainty exploring new ideas and have to thoughtfully present their case. Recently I came across the pitch deck from Zuora – Subscription SaaS company. See the deck here and a good commentary about this deck is here. Nearly…
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Making Things in Seattle
This summer I got interested in making things in Seattle. After nearly 25 years since my last attempt with robots, I got to work with robots. As part of the SparkSip: Tiny Task Bots project, we built a small robot that will be used for cleaning metal roof. Congrats to the kids who worked on this robot…
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Bridge the world of difference in Olympics
Over the past two weeks International Olympics 2016 is in full swing. As of Aug 20, 2016, The USA is leading the medal tally with more than 100 medals. Kudos to all the fantastic athletes, coaches, parents, organizations, and organizers for propelling USA to the top of the charts. In daily life I observe parents and…
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Build a house and you learn a lot …
In my mother tongue – Tamil – there is a saying: “ஒரு வீட்டை கட்டிப் பார்; ஒரு கல்யாணம் ப்ண்ணிப் பார்” meaning, “Build a house; conduct a wedding” to learn more. Everyone lives almost half their lives in their houses, so let us make it great. A few years back a dream to build a house entered our minds. We…